


return to the sunlit lands

by PanBoleyn



Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death Fix, Discussion of Canonical Suicide, Eventual Happy Ending, M/M, Miscommunication: A Case Study, Not so happy reunions, Quentin Coldwater Deserved Better, Quentin Coldwater Lives, artistic license - mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:40:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 47,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25043281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PanBoleyn/pseuds/PanBoleyn
Summary: ... no one is coming for him, if he is going to get out he’ll have to save himself. And if he does get out, he can never go back, because there is no place for him there anymore. He can’t imagine they’d even want him, and he has no interest in pity or obligation.If he gets out, they’re never going to know.Quentin escapes the Underworld, and finds himself in Narnia. But, having seen his friends let him go and move on, he believes there's no point in trying to get back, and settles down where he is. But his past is not done with him yet, as he learns when a window opens between Narnia and New Fillory...Book cover by fishydwarrows to be found here!
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Quentin Coldwater & Alice Quinn, Quentin Coldwater & Julia Wicker, Quentin Coldwater & Margo Hanson, Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh, Quentin Coldwater/Original Male Character(s)
Comments: 171
Kudos: 289





	1. pick a star on the dark horizon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fishydwarrows](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishydwarrows/gifts).



> Hello! I hope this finds you well! This fic is for fishydwarrows for the Not Alone Here BLM fundraiser. It was supposed to be a oneshot, but as with many tales, grew in the telling. So now it's a three-parter.
> 
> Warnings for this chapter include discussion of Quentin's suicide and suicidal thoughts/depression, implied Underworld torture, dream violence, Quentin being very bitter and angry with regards to his friends, and some broad strokes discussion of homophobia from the 1940s to present day. 
> 
> Also, a more general audience warning, if you liked season 5, especially how the aftermath of Quentin's death was handled, this is NOT the fic for you. While the later chapters will be more sympathetic about it, the entire arc will be viewed negatively. A few deliberate changes to s5 (I didn't actually watch so anything else is accidental): Alice and Kady became an item at some point, both Kady and Eliot helped with the New Fillory spell and thus were brought along, and Eliot/Charlton just... never... happened. I gave no thought to Charlton beyond that, feel free to imagine any alternate fate you wish for him.
> 
> As ever, thanks to my enablers, particularly Maii for looking over my draft, and thanks to Evelyn for the prompt!
> 
> An explanation of my Narnia choices is in the end notes!

It’s funny, really, that the thing his one-time friends were trying to stop is what saves Quentin, but it doesn’t surprise him at this point. It’s not that he approves - what he saw in the viewing pools was maybe not entirely complete but he does know that Sebastian/Rupert/whatever was destroying Fillory to do what he did and that’s… Well. Destroying a whole world to save one person is definitely not OK, yet Quentin can’t help envying that one person. 

Anyway. Somebody on the living side closes the big gaping opening pretty fast, though Quentin doesn’t bother to check exactly how they do that. But the thing about explosions is that they cause stress. They cause openings elsewhere. And here is the most interesting fact about the Asphodel Meadows, the level below Erebus - Erebus makes up the Underworld Library and places like that afterlife bowling alley. But the Meadows... If you can get out, you have a second chance. It’s the nature of the Meadows, that the spirits who have not gone beyond to the true afterlife can leave, if they find the willpower to seek a way out. 

Most of them can’t. You can speak in the Asphodel Meadows, but most of the ghosts don’t. Most of them have forgotten how. If Quentin escapes, he knows he will never forget the sounds they make, the chittering incoherent whispers like a wind in a horror story. 

It’s easier to just drift along the banks of the Styx, under white-barked poplar trees, to give oneself to the mindlessness of it, until you are pulled through the gates to be judged. But Quentin, full of hope for peace, for something beautiful in death… Well. The quiet greyness of the Meadows had been too much a shock to the system for him to simply accept it. 

In hindsight, the way Penny lied to him was the first clue.

Quentin had begun trying to find a way out, because the spirits who don’t give in know instinctively that they can, as if the strength to keep your sense of self grants that right. He’s not sure if it’s a gift or a curse. Both, probably. 

And then he’d been summoned before Melinoe, a daughter of Hades and Persephone, goddess of nightmares, who has in her charge the disciplining of rebellious spirits. 

He won’t think about the punishment the Furies inflicted at her command. But he can’t forget what she showed him in the viewing pool. He hadn’t known that the shiny black pools were windows into the living world until then, and since then he’s wished he didn’t know. 

But that first time… Eliot and Margo using time magic to save Josh and Fen, and it had looked like Eliot might do the same for Quentin but then… The Mountain, the things Alice and Eliot said, the things they brought with them. Things that might have saved him, that Quentin knows if he’d had, he would have used to at least try to save either of them. And they’d simply thrown them away, and cried together about it like it was the only thing they could do, like his tragic memory was a bonding experience. 

The worst had been hearing Eliot talk about the Mosaic. 

They gave him the letter, and opened the little bottle so that his soul fragment would return to him. When it did, Quentin remembered being twelve again, remembered Julia telling him his true friends would never abandon him (what a fucking lie) and how he’d told Alice that his own suicide was giving her the gift of her own life. 

How he’d leaned into Alice’s side and died again. 

“Now, will you accept your fate like a good little ghost? You’re dead, you always die young, my sister Macaria’s court has  _ three  _ of your former ghosts among her people. It is your fate,” Melinoe had said, scorn in every word. Quentin, his ghostly body still full of pain from the Furies’ ministrations, had only bowed and left. 

He wears the bottle as a necklace now, strung on a lace pulled off his hoodie. The letter is inside it, shrunk to fit. He’s never read it. He will never read it. Letters thrown away like so much trash aren’t for reading, even if they come into the hands of the person they’re addressed to, because they mean nothing. 

He’s learned to use the viewing pools since. He’s seen Alice and Kady become lovers, seen Eliot kissing Fillory’s new king. Julia’s pregnant of all things, and before that she risked the apocalypse for 23. More than one of them were willing to plead for Josh, lost in the realm between the Underworld and Life. 

But Quentin? A tragic memory mostly forgotten within two months. 

It’s not that he would want them to hurt themselves trying to save him, or to hurt other people. But a little more research, a little more effort than two sentences about why time magic won’t work, he thinks that wasn’t too much to want. He thinks that after everything, cracking open a few books just to make sure there was nothing they could do is something he wasn’t wrong to hope for. Not when so many other people had been worth not only a discussion of options but actually going through with the plans made.

He wears his necklace as a reminder that no one is coming for him, that if he is going to get out he’ll have to save himself. And that if he does get out, he can  _ never  _ go back, because there is no place for him there anymore. He can’t imagine they’d even want him, and he has no interest in pity or obligation. 

If he gets out, they’re never going to know.

And so, when Erebus is ripped open by way of Limbo, and the fault lines spread down to Asphodel, Quentin only looks for the first opening he finds. He hopes it leads to Earth, for familiarity, but if it doesn’t… If it doesn’t, it will still lead to Life, and that is the first goal right now. He doesn’t think about people - the others who seek talk to him sometimes, most of them have people they want to get back to. Parents or siblings, children or friends or lovers. 

“If you have no one, why are you even trying to get back?” one of them asks him once. 

“Because I have no one,” Quentin says, because the truth is, he wants to save himself because he killed himself (another lie Penny told him was trying to convince him he didn’t), because he made a mistake and it’s his right to undo it if he can. And because no one else will. He is not going to be saved, so he’ll have to do it himself. He wants to prove he can, he wants to prove he didn’t need their help anyway so it doesn’t matter that none was coming. 

(That none had been there when he was still in front of them, fading before their eyes but no one took the time to  _ look _ .)

While he’s looking for it, he finds another pool, and sees 23 getting the help of Jane Chatwin to use her time magic to save Julia from dying in childbirth - some kind of accident involving the psychic baby, he doesn’t hear all of it. Jane will help to save Julia, when she’d told Eliot to let the dead stay dead - and Eliot, of course, had listened when it came to Quentin, hadn’t he? 

He also hears that once Julia is all right, she names her daughter Hope Quentin. He supposes he should be touched. All he can think is that with a nickname like HQ, that kid is going to get teased for her name even more than he did. It’s petty and mean, but he feels petty and mean. He doesn’t want to be nice, or touched, he doesn’t want to be their token tragic memory, he isn’t the person he heard them talk about mourning, that wasn’t him, it’s like all they can remember is a shadow. 

Quentin knows he’s not that impressive a person, but he hates being reduced to brave and messy, someone to learn how to sacrifice from. He hears that too, from Margo when they’re conjuring up New Fillory with the fucking spell he once thought might make a good thesis project. For a moment he hesitates because if she does die, he intends to go find her and ask how she likes the fucking lesson. She can escape with him, if she dies, he wouldn’t leave her here - but, oh, she’s not  _ him _ , she won’t need  _ his  _ help because he’s sure no one will let  _ her  _ stay dead - but then she survives, and he sees her grab hold of Eliot, and next moment everyone in that little group are sitting on the grass of a new world. 

Quentin leaves them to it, to the place he assumes will be called New Fillory. He has his own quest to complete. 

He finds a crack in the ground near a poplar that is actually three trunks twined together, a crack that wasn’t there the last time he passed this way. Looking down, he sees bright colors, blue sky and an ocean clearer blue than he’s ever seen. Quentin should hesitate, should fear that landing in the open ocean will do nothing but return him to death very soon, but somehow he doesn’t think that will happen. 

And so he jumps. 

Quentin falls, and he thinks he sees the Neitherlands, their strange light and their fountains. He thinks he sees somewhere else with sunlight like golden syrup, shimmery-green trees and deep blue pools. He feels almost as though he falls through a fountain, through a pool, and he understands somehow that he is glimpsing in-between places, the in-betweens of Life as Asphodel is the in-between of Death.

Quentin falls, and he lands in water, his body slicing through the waves until he remembers to kick, to move his arms, to propel himself up. In water, the strangeness of being solid again is less, because in water no one feels entirely solid. He comes up gasping, wet hair plastered to his skull, salty droplets in his eyes yet not stinging as much as he’d expect them to. 

He blinks the water away, and just in time because - holy fucking shit that is a ship heading his way. Quentin yelps and strikes out swimming, desperate as the approaching ship’s weight pulls at the water around him. Then there’s a splash, and an arm around his waist pulling him onto some kind of lift. Quentin looks up, meeting a pair of amused dark eyes.

“My second castaway rescue on this voyage. Tell me, my friend, where did you come from?”

It’s possibly the kindest treatment he can remember in a long time, Penny’s friendliness too strange to be really comforting, and it’s all Quentin can do not to burst into tears. 

Holy shit, he did it. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Quentin, it turns out, is in fucking Narnia. 

If he ever does find his way back to Earth, he is somehow going to post some kind of message for magicians - _ beware, all fictional lands might actually be real. _ It’s the kind of thing that could only happen to him, and he’s torn between amused bewilderment and honestly not caring, because wherever he is, it means he’s alive again. 

It also means he’s alone in a world not his, for the very first time. He doesn’t have Eliot and Margo, Alice and Penny, he doesn’t have Julia. He doesn’t have the authority, however tenuous, of the kingship Eliot once granted him, that let him go alone to do things like sail off into the Abyss on the  _ Muntjac _ . 

Quentin Coldwater has only himself, dripping wet in the clothes he once died in, somehow inexplicably reconstituted with the rest of his body, his bangs falling pale and soaked into his eyes. 

Wait. Pale? 

_ Figure out why you have white hair later, Coldwater, _ Quentin tells himself firmly as Caspian - King Caspian - stands before him, eyes narrowed in suspicion. He’s young, twenty or twenty-one, but none of them were all that much older when they claimed crowns in Fillory. “We have told you where you are and who you face, but you still have not explained who you are.”

“My name is Quentin Coldwater. I come from Earth, a place where Narnia is - it’s just a story. I’ve read about you, and all four of the Pevensies.”

“You can’t come from Earth,” says the teenage boy, Edmund. Dizzily, Quentin thinks he doesn’t look anything like the old cartoon, but that’s nonsensical, of course he wouldn’t. “We come from Earth, and what are you wearing?” 

“I’m from the future - well, to you it would be the future, to me it’s just the time period I live in. 2019,” Quentin says, because he can’t think of anything else to say. “I’m a magician, I was - traveling. I got lost between worlds.” He remembers, his favorite book of the Narnia quartet had been the first one, the one about Digory and Polly, Charn and the Wood Between the Worlds before Narnia even appeared in it. 

The Wood and the Neitherlands, that’s what he saw as he fell through the crack into this Narnian sea, he doesn’t understand it but strictly speaking, ‘traveling and got lost between worlds’ is not precisely a lie. 

“That explains why he’s an adult - remember, Ed, Professor Kirke said the rings didn’t have an age limit like the Magic?” says Lucy Pevensie, and she doesn’t look like the cartoon or the book illustrations either. 

“Yes, of course - he also said he didn’t recommend we try to use them, because of the Wood Between the Worlds having so many pools…” Edmund trails off, eyes narrowing as he studies Quentin, and Quentin sees a thing from the outside then that he knows all too well from within. Those eyes are not a teenager’s eyes, they are the eyes of a person grown to adulthood and then sent back to a younger body. 

Just as Quentin’s eyes, his heart, are those of an old man.

“Still, from the future…” Edmund murmurs, then shakes his head. “Then again, we did come back to Narnia to find 1,300 years had passed, I suppose it’s just possible that someone from our future could come to the same time as us in Narnia.”

“So do we trust him, or no? The legends say that the Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve who come to Narnia have been helpful - Lord Digory and Lady Polly, King Frank and Queen Helen from whom the kings of Archenland still descend - but never a Magician from your world before,” Caspian cuts in, and Edmund and Lucy exchange worried looks. 

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Quentin, despite his little cover story, doesn’t actually have any world-hopping ability. He has nowhere to go, he has nothing - 

Someone drops a spyglass, and the pieces slide across the deck to his feet. For a moment, it seems almost too good to be true, but Quentin decides not to question it, not to question that sense of broken pieces sleeping, ready for him to wake them. Ready for him to mend them. He just kneels on the damp wood and moves his fingers in the necessary tut. 

For a moment he remembers -

_ Fingers curling easily behind his back, an easy spell for mending glass Eliot showed him his first week _

_ “What did you do?”  _

_ “Just a minor mending.” _

_ Burning, burning, he’s burning and all he can see is the horror on Alice’s face _

_ The bonfire, and he’s never seen Eliot look so lost  _

_ Eliot and Alice on the Mountain, dropping the letter together and then holding onto each other for comfort _

But the memories don’t interfere with his casting, and still on his knees, he holds up the repaired spyglass. “I can do more than this,” he says. “Small objects are my specialty, but most big objects are made up of smaller bits. I’ll figure it out, and I have my uses. I don’t know why I’m here, but I think it’s obvious I have nowhere to go. I’ll owe you, if you don’t put me off at the next empty island you see, or cut off my head right now. I can do other things with magic, everything I can do is at your disposal.” 

It’s not exactly a familiar position and it’s embarrassing, but there’s relief in it too. If they keep him, he will have made a bargain. He’ll know what’s expected. He won’t hope for more and find himself dashed when it doesn’t happen. 

“He must be here for a reason,” Lucy says finally, and Quentin thinks of saying  _ “destiny is bullshit” _ but he’s not going to argue if their belief in destiny helps him now. Besides, destiny isn’t the only thing that turned out to be bullshit in his life, so maybe it’s just him that’s the problem.

“I agree,” Caspian declares. “Welcome to the  _ Dawn Treader _ , Quentin Coldwater.” 

That night, in the hammock they give him, Quentin lies awake staring at the wood - he can see in the dark better than he remembers before, a strange little thing. He thinks of Julia and Penny 23 with their newborn daughter, thinks of Eliot and Margo, Alice and Kady, on the grass of a new world. (And, all right, Fen and Josh, but he never did know them well enough for them to  _ mean  _ much to him.)

He thinks of Penny 40 in a greyscale parking lot, his hug and his promises, his unnerving kindness. 

And, Quentin thinks that they are perhaps all where they ought to be. His former friends all look happy enough to be where they are now. And he is now free of the Asphodel Meadows, he made his escape and he is in a world that he still thought, before today, belonged only to fiction. 

_ “Maybe I was better off just thinking it was fiction.” _

Maybe he will be again, but the truth, Quentin decides, is that it doesn’t matter. This is Life, this is a new world. No one will fight for him, he’s seen that very clearly, so he must fight for himself. He did that today, didn’t he? Made a case to stay that actually succeeded? He just has to keep doing that.

He has no home to go to so he might as well figure out how to belong here. It probably won’t ever feel quite like home (he knows what that feels like, knows it’s not a place, knows that it’s - but he’ll never have that again so he must try not to think of it) but he can make something good out of it, can’t he? 

He has to, or what was the point? 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Life on a ship develops a pattern. Quentin learned this on the _ Muntjac _ , and learns it anew on the  _ Dawn Treader _ . But of course on the  _ Muntjac  _ he’d been a king and a passenger, who had been allowed to try things on the ship but was mostly expected to stay out of the crew’s way. Here, he is a new crew member earning his keep, and he falls exhausted into his hammock every night. His hands have rope burns, his whole body aches, but he welcomes the pain as proof of life. 

He bundles up his old clothes that he’d come back to life wearing - that he’d died wearing - and takes them up to the prow of the ship, where no one usually is. There he lets the black clothes fall into the sea, the shoes tumbling after them. 

“Why did you do that?” 

Quentin jumps, whirling around to see Lucy Pevensie watching him, her eyes like her brother’s, too old for her face. “Bad memories, Your Majesty,” he says after a moment, because that is true enough. 

“But you’re still wearing that funny little necklace,” she points out, and Quentin touches the bottle self-consciously, because she’s right. 

“I need this,” he says finally. “It reminds me of things I have to remember.” 

“You don’t sound like you want to remember them.” 

“I don’t,” Quentin admits. “But I can’t afford not to.” 

He drops back down from the edge to sit on the little bench carved into the hull, and he isn’t really surprised when Lucy sits next to him. “You don’t want to go back to Earth any more than my brother and I do, do you? It makes sense for us, Narnia is our home in ways England just can’t be anymore, even if we won’t be allowed to keep it forever, but you are a Magician. You traveled worlds by choice, and you can come and go as you wish.” 

“Not really. The magic I used isn’t something I’ll be able to do again,” Quentin says, and again that is technically true. He did use magic, it was just in the way of taking advantage of someone else’s magic. “The thing is, even if I could go back to Earth, I can’t go home. It - it’s lost to me. So I have to make things work wherever I land, which is here for the foreseeable future.” 

_ “If you want to live your life, live it here!”  _

_ Thanks, Eliot. I think I will. _

Quentin pushes the thoughts aside to focus on Lucy. “You sound very bleak when you talk like that. I think you really did need Narnia. It will teach you how to be happy again,” she tells him firmly. Quentin laughs, more from surprise than anything else. 

But it feels good to laugh again. 

The next day, Eustace gets caught stealing an orange, and Reepicheep goads him into a duel. It’s blatantly obvious that the Talking Mouse is doing it to try and teach Eustace the rudiments of swordfighting, even if it’s a fight with a mouse-sized rapier and a chopping knife from the kitchen. Still, it’s fun enough to watch, and it gives Quentin an idea. 

“I ought to learn from you,” Quentin tells Reepicheep after, leaning on the rail near him. 

“Well! Fetch yourself a blade then, Master Quentin! Kirel, get over here, your size is better for this!” 

Kirel, the sailor whose hammock is strung up next to Quentin’s, is a man a little taller than Quentin himself, with brown curls always messy in the sea breezes. His shirt is half open at the collar, and Quentin can’t help but notice it’s a good look on him. He doesn’t remember the last time he cared about things like that.

It becomes a part of his day when neither of them have duties, Quentin and Kirel fighting with wooden sticks in place of blades that might actually hurt someone while Reepicheep calls advice.

“Do you mind helping me?” Quentin asks one day after another practice, the clack of wooden staves and Reepicheep’s commands still ringing in his ears. 

“Not at all,” Kirel says with a shrug. “Honestly - you remind me a little of my Tom, with that pale hair of yours, though yours is even lighter than his was. You’ve old man hair before age thirty, Quentin.” 

“Tom?” Quentin asks, ignoring the comment about his hair. It’s weird, he has no idea why it’s white, but it also doesn’t matter. 

“We were pledged to each other,” Kirel says softly. “Then he took ill with fever. And I took to the sea, once he was gone. And I think maybe you’re here for the same kind of reason? That necklace of yours seems a token of a loss like mine. Also, you didn’t whine when I made you practice every sailor’s knot ten times apiece, so I decided to like you then.” 

“Well, Kirel, I’m glad you did,” Quentin says with a faint smile. They start taking meals together, when they can, he and Kirel. Quentin doesn’t talk much but he doesn’t have to, not with a companion who likes to tell stories. It’s nice, and a little familiar, but he focuses on the nice part, as much as he can. 

On Coriakin’s Island, after Lucy has been recovered and they are all guests of Coriakin the Magician, Quentin is brought along to see the beautiful moving map of the Eastern Sea, showing them the Blue Star that will lead them to Ramandu’s Island. Quentin can feel the magic in this mansion, in the map, in Coriakin himself, wild like the magic in Fillory as opposed to Earth, but a different kind of wild. Fillory had been… a wind, this is a river, both untamed but so different. 

“You. Ship’s magician. Stay,” Coriakin says as Caspian, Edmund, Lucy, and Eustace leave. 

“I’m hardly a ship’s magician,” Quentin says, bewildered, but he does stay. 

“Hm. Not yet, perhaps. Do they know where you came from?" There's a flash in Coriakin’s eyes, a white spark like starlight. 

"Only that I'm from Earth."

"But not that you come here from the Asphodel Meadows."

"I - no." Quentin lifts his chin. "Will you tell them?"

"No. But you should remember, even the things you see are not always the full story. Especially now that you can no longer watch."

Before Quentin can ask what that's about, Coriakin shoves a stack of books and a satchel into his hands. "I no longer need these," he says coolly. "You should join the others."

Quentin spells the bag into a Bag of Holding as soon as he's alone in the corridor, and tries not to dwell on what Coriakin said.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


The storm hits the next morning, and there is no time for any kind of fun at all. Quentin finally proves why his offer of mending was actually a good one, scrambling across the ship with a rope round his waist, fastened to whatever is nearest so that he can’t be knocked overboard. Every time something breaks, Quentin gets there as fast as he can, there with a spell to repair it. 

When he’s not casting, or making his way to a new repair job, he’s sleeping, the magic leaving him drained. He dreams in flashes, Julia casting sparks over a crib and a baby’s laughter, Eliot and Margo in a half-built room discussing something he can’t hear, Alice and Kady standing in a  _ field of bacon _ of all things, Kady laughing and Alice looking sheepish but pleased.

Julia and Penny 23 on one side, Eliot, Margo, Alice, and Kady on another, casting so that a doorway appears between them, a portal between Earth and New Fillory, he assumes. 

He wakes up from these dreams and is relieved to go back out where the rain and sea spray disguise the tear tracks on his face.

As Quentin makes repairs, over and over, he begins to realize that this ship feels like his. He has a claim on it quite apart from Caspian’s as king or Drinian’s as captain, one born entirely of knowing the ship down to its core. Not every piece of it, but enough. Enough that the wood against his palms feels like the touch of a friend. Enough that the creaking of the hull is a comforting sound, not a worrying one, even in a storm.

The storm breaks, and they find themselves on an island. It looks like they won’t find much in the way of supplies - even from the beach it seems pretty barren, but they have to try. So Quentin, like the others in the shore party, take baskets and go looking for what provisions they can forage.

“You know, I hardly expected you to wear yourself to exhaustion with the promise of magical repair.” 

Quentin looks up from his basket, nowhere near full, and finds himself staring at King Caspian. “I only did what I could,” he says finally.

“Yes. And that was more than we expected,” Caspian says. “That magic of yours is rather practical, isn’t it?” 

Quentin thinks of card tricks, of sparks and bending light, telekinesis and ice magic. “Some of it. Mending is, at least.”  _ Just a minor mending, _ he thinks, and how for one shining moment he’d been proud of himself, proud of finally having the magic needed to save the day.

He’s happier this time, somehow. He didn’t save the day, but he made things a little easier. 

“Well. Perhaps you should consider teaching some of it, when we get back to Narnia.” 

“I definitely will, Your Majesty,” Quentin says.

"And, ah… Tell me, do you know anything of appropriate courting rituals, in your home?"

Quentin stares. "Uh… I'm from several decades later than, um. Anyone else here from Earth so even if I had useful advice for my time - and I really don't - it wouldn't help you. But…" He takes a risk. "The other two are pretty Narnian, so I don't think you need it?"

Before Caspian can reply, Edmund and Lucy are calling for him and Quentin goes back to gathering what food there is to find with very real relief. 

They call that island Dragon Island, because Eustace, wandering off, manages to get himself turned into one. Apparently, trying to claim things from a dragon’s hoard just… does that here, which is kind of alarming, actually. 

“I’m sorry, turning people into dragons isn’t a kind of magic I even knew was possible,” Quentin has to admit when they ask him if his spells include any way to fix him. “I’ll check the books Coriakin gave me but I would guess that if there’s any way for Eustace to turn back, it’ll happen in its own time just like the change itself did when he found the hoard.”

The Pevensies, Caspian, and Reepicheep stay on the island with Eustace, and everyone else goes back to the ship. Quentin is alone in a tiny corner of the ship when he hears footsteps. Turning, he finds Kirel closer than he’s been except certain moments during their practice. “Uh, hi,” Quentin says. “What -” 

Kirel kisses him, hands cupping both sides of Quentin’s face as he steps closer so they’re pressed together, and Quentin has a brief moment of thinking thank God he kisses differently before he kisses back. When it breaks, he says quietly, “You know I’m not your Tom.” 

“And I’m not whoever makes you look at your left hand as if you expect to see a ring upon it. Does it matter?”

And it doesn’t, does it, because really, there’s only two people who might have made Quentin hesitate, and they have both moved on. Why shouldn’t he? So he lets Kirel press him back against the hull, gives himself up to the physical moment. 

If he’s pretty sure Kirel is thinking of a ghost when he makes wordless sounds in Quentin’s ear, well. Quentin’s trying to banish a couple memories, he can’t judge, now can he? 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


It’s all going so well, until Liliandil looks at Quentin and calls him “the one-time king, back from the dead.” 

“Um,” Quentin says, because he was barely a king and also, how does she know either of those things? Except that apparently she’s a star, so who knows how they know things? Maybe she can see it on him, or something? It doesn’t really matter, because at her words, the crew mutters, stepping back from him, and even Caspian and the Pevensies eye him warily. 

“You cowards!” declares a fierce voice from near the floor. Reepicheep, marching forward to stand in front of Quentin, facing the crew with a hand on his sword hilt. “Whatever this Lady tells us, is this not our crewmate from the same land as King Edmund and Queen Lucy? The same one whose magic has helped keep the  _ Dawn Treader _ seaworthy? We’ve all seen he bleeds as red as any of you other Men, so I say it is shameful to back away as if he were some ghoul!”

Quentin, for his part, suddenly wants to hug the Mouse, but he knows that would be the worst insult he could offer. Still, he blinks several times very quickly, refusing to let any tears fall after such a valiant defense.

“Indeed he is not,” Liliandil says, and when Quentin looks back at her he can’t even be angry. She looks surprised and puzzled, as if she had no idea such an announcement would cause so much fuss. “He is as living as anyone else in this room, it’s only that for a time he was not. Death is just another world - another series of worlds, in fact.” 

“Aslan’s country?” Drinian asks. Liliandil shrugs and doesn’t answer. But somehow Quentin thinks the very fact of her silence is an answer. So he clears his throat and steps around Reepicheep, with a grateful smile for the Mouse when he looks up. 

“That’s where we’re going, isn’t it? I know not all the crew was necessarily planning to go all the way, and I hadn’t decided, but I’ll do that,” Quentin says, remembering when he’d announced to the room of his friends that he was going to stay in the castle. This feels necessary in the same way that had, and more than that it feels like the right thing to do, the same way leaping through the crack back into Life had felt right. 

“I’ll vow it right here at Aslan’s Table, that I’ll present myself for his judgment, and all I ask is that I be allowed to stay among you until then.” It’s the kind of thing Quentin might have put into a story he was writing - actually, though he can barely remember the fics he wrote in undergrad now, he thinks he did write something like this once - and it’s the kind of thing that makes sense here in Narnia. Narnia, which is still richer and wilder and better and worse than its books back on Earth, just like Fillory had proved to be, but follows the rules of fairy tales more kindly than Fillory does. 

“I’ll accept that,” Caspian says in a clear ringing voice, and when Quentin looks at him he smiles. 

“So will we,” Lucy says as if she thinks Quentin might need the extra support, and Edmund nods his agreement, both of them watching Quentin with steady eyes. And he - he’s relieved but it aches too, that these people who barely know him have taken him on the merits of… what? That he used his magic to fix the ship as much as possible, even during the storm? 

At any rate, the word of their king and the king and queen of legend is apparently enough, because the crew stops muttering. Most of them seem intent on keeping their distance, though, so Quentin makes that easier for them. Caspian declared that they would spend two days here to recover a bit before they have to face Dark Island, so Quentin decides to go exploring. 

Kirel smiles and claps him on the shoulder as he walks away though, so that’s a nice bit of comfort.

In a lot of ways, Quentin’s glad that if he had to come to Narnia, he came not to the country itself but to a Narnian ship mid-voyage. He can’t be sure, but he’d read the Narnia quartet more than once and often used to engage in Narnia vs Fillory fandom debates, and the impression he’d always gotten was that they were… somewhat similar countries. In terms of weather and plants and shit like that. But this is different. Dragon Island had been rocky and bare, Coriakin’s Island lush and a little bit strange as seemed appropriate for a place ruled by a magician and home to beings as, er, quirky as the Dufflepuds.

This island is full of trees that seem to glow with an inner light, the grass shimmery with dew even at the height of the afternoon. As night falls, Quentin knows he should head back but he finds himself sitting on a boulder of pure quartz, leaning back on his elbows and watching the stars come out. He wonders if they would all glow as blue as Liliandil if they came down to be living beings. 

“I don’t know the constellations this far out.” 

Quentin sits up to see Edmund coming out of the shadows, his flashlight in hand. “I thought you said that in your day, Narnia was a sailing country?” he asks, shifting on the rock so that Edmund can sit next to him. 

“It was, but we never went further east than the Lone Islands. Further south, sure - at some point they’ll tell the tale of King Cor and Queen Aravis of Archenland, back when they were just a pair of young runaways, and Lucy and I will laugh and correct the bits the legends got wrong, for the parts we saw at least. Part of that story was a trip to Tashbaan, the capital of Calormen, which is why I bring it up.” 

“Actually, I read that,” Quentin says absently. “It was the third of the four books about Narnia they have by my time on Earth.  _ The Horse and His Boy _ .” 

“Huh! How about that. I wonder… Do you know C.S. Lewis’ real name?” Edmund asks. 

“Uh… Clive Staples,” Quentin says after a moment, remembering a biopic he’d watched with Molly back when he was seventeen and she was belatedly trying to connect with him as stepmom and stepson. 

(She hadn’t been  _ good  _ at it, but she’d tried, and in his better moments Quentin does appreciate that. He wonders if anyone told her and his mother that he was dead. He saw no real funeral, he doesn’t know if he has a headstone and an empty grave by his father’s. He can’t decide if he hates the not knowing or finds it a relief.)

“Hm,” Edmund says, breaking into Quentin’s thoughts. “Eustace has a cousin by that name, through his dad instead of his mum like Luce and me. Maybe that’s how he came to learn about Narnia - we won’t be here forever probably, and hopefully that means Eustace will be turned human again. Or maybe he went himself at some point and took his favorite of the stories he was told.” 

Quentin wonders if Edmund knows how sad he sounds at the idea of leaving Narnia again. But all he says is, “I don’t know, maybe,” while looking up at the fully-dark sky. “I don’t know them either. The stars, I mean. I’m  _ glad  _ I don’t.” He isn’t sure if he spits the words or half sobs them, the sight of the stars suddenly blurred by tears. “I saved myself, Edmund. Whatever else about - where I came from, Earth by way of the afterlife, it’s true enough but I - I did it and I undid it, and that’s the thing that is truest about me.” 

“I… I don’t understand,” Edmund says warily.

“I killed myself,” Quentin says, forcing himself to say it aloud, to be blunt. “I’d struggled for years with wanting to, tried and failed - and then I succeeded on a whim, I succeeded in a way that let me go out a big hero, and then I had to watch from the other side as - magic can, can sometimes let you bring people back. If certain circumstances apply. I saw - I saw the people I loved, the people who I’d been told my death was the right thing for because I saved them - I watched them do that for others in our group or extended group. But for me? The same magic that saved multiple other people after I was gone, after the choice was made to let me stay dead? Dismissed and thrown away in moments, when it was about me.” 

He blinks until his vision clears. “Lucy’s right, when she says that I’m like the two of you. That I lived a whole other life. I wasn’t alone, though. I lived a life with one of my best friends, I fell in love with him - well, no. I already was, but in that life I acted on it. He let me. But in the real one, he’s the person who threw away that bit of magic that might have saved me, together with the woman who was my first real love.” 

Alice had called Julia that but it wasn’t true - in hindsight his feelings for Julia had been a crush tangled with their friendship, not love. Alice had been love, his first love in both the good and the bad. Eliot had been love, long before Quentin had even recognized it for what it was. 

It would have hurt to watch anyone at that well, but that it had been  _ Alice and Eliot _ \- that’s the worst of it. In his blackest moments, he tells himself he should regret ever saving  _ them _ , but he can’t make himself do it, even though he thinks maybe it would hurt less if he could.

“I used to lay out under the Fillorian stars with him, or we’d make our own with magic in every color we could think of, invent our own constellations. When I was a little boy, my best friend and I used to look for constellations with a telescope. I like that I don’t know these stars, because it means I can enjoy them without it hurting me.” 

“Somehow, unhurt is not the word I would use to describe you,” Edmund says, very dry, and Quentin actually laughs.

“Well, no. But I can enjoy that these are new stars.” 

“So can I,” Edmund says after a long quiet moment. “Except… Peter and Susan only got two visits to Narnia. I’m seventeen, the same age Pete was that second time. I’m seventeen, Lucy’s fifteen - Su was sixteen, the second time. Except for how we’re all adults too, in our heads, which is bloody confusing.” 

“If you add the years I’ve lived in one life to the other, I’m in my late nineties, so I get it,” Quentin says. 

“Yeah, you would, wouldn’t you? It’s just - I think I know already, this is our last time. If we go back to Earth, that’s it. And I - you were in love with your best friend.  _ Him _ , you said. You could do that? You could be in love with a man, and be allowed to do it in the open? Or was that only a thing you could do in that country, Fillory?” 

Oh. That - actually, Quentin’s been kind of surprised neither Edmund nor Lucy have asked many questions about the future. Eustace, of course, had refused to believe Quentin was anything but a ‘delusional American’. But that question, specifically… He’d thought he’d been overthinking the energy he thought he saw underlying the duels for fun Edmund and Caspian have, but… maybe not. 

“We could have. The reasons we didn’t were, um, personal. It’s not perfect, being gay or bisexual - that’s me, interested in men and women - it’s still not easy.” He thinks of the things Eliot told him, in bits and pieces. Thinks of how easy he’d had it by comparison. “It’s legal and all, and you can get married in, um, some countries, mine and yours included, but it’s - sort of luck of the draw with, you know, everyday life. Family and friends and people at your work, all that.” 

“Will I live to see that, if I go back?” 

Shit. But Quentin has to be honest, doesn’t he, even if he has been simplifying things a lot? He looks over at Edmund and he looks so  _ young _ , even with fifteen extra years behind his eyes. Quentin has fifty of the same, after all, he is in some ways still so much older than even the Pevensies. “I don’t know. You’ll have a long wait - it’ll start to get better long before that, in some ways… but you’ll have a long wait, and there’s some pretty awful stuff that happens.” 

“Well, that’s rather inconvenient,” Edmund says. That’s all he says, and the two of them look up at unfamiliar stars in silence until Liliandil and Lucy find them to bring them inside. 

Kirel finds Quentin once they’re all settled for the night - they’re due to sail at dawn.

"You don't care?" Quentin asks. "About the formerly dead thing?"

"You were already of another world, and it does explain the hair, I suppose. Somehow."

They get less sleep than might be advised. But Quentin, a hand over his own mouth to keep himself quiet, thinks that if he’s to be sent back to the Meadows, at least he’s had every experience he can manage to find, on a voyage like this.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Sailing into darkness for the sake of a quest. 

Somehow, this seems really fucking familiar. 

Quentin doesn’t say anything about that, as the  _ Dawn Treader _ makes its way into the black cloud. He doesn’t know if the things he went through with the Abyss would be any help anyway, doesn’t know if warning the others just what they might face would be strengthening or make it worse. 

And, of course, thinking about his trip on the  _ Muntjac _ makes him think of -

_ “You can do that thing you always wanted to do.”  _

_ “Go be life partners with someone else for a while.” _

_ God, Eliot, go fuck yourself, or go fuck the Dark King since you seemed to like him so much,  _ Quentin tells the memory of Eliot’s voice, but it doesn’t really help. 

He’s known this was going to be a little too familiar ever since Coriakin said they would have to face the darkness within themselves. Since everyone on the ship began to be plagued with nightmares and Quentin’s are of the Monster in Eliot’s body, of Niffin Alice and the worst of Shadeless Julia. 

And sometimes he dreams of things that never happened at all, dreams where one by one his friends leave him dying on the ground from terrible injuries he can never remember getting.

And worst of all, dreams where Julia takes the Leo Blade and slits his throat with it. Where Margo buries her axes in his chest, or Alice pushes him down a bottomless pit. Where Eliot’s hands are wrapped around his neck and it’s actually  _ him  _ behind his eyes. Dreams where those Quentin loves not only don’t save him, but kill him. 

He admits, he didn’t exactly expect those, but they’re not a surprise. Even less of a surprise is a sneering reflection of his own face, shaped in green mist, circling him. 

_ “Of course no one bothered to save you. You’ve always been useless. There’s no new problem since they cleaned up their last messes, they don’t want you back because you always cause new problems.”  _

Quentin clenches his fist on the ropes and ignores it. 

_ “These new friends will learn you break everything soon enough, you know.” _

He has broken everything, even mending ended up breaking  _ him _ , but he hasn’t since then, has he? He helped fix this ship, and that was enough here to make him trustworthy, to make him worth defending. 

_ “You’re supposed to be dead, and you’ll be dead again soon enough. Just jump off the side and end it now.” _

Well, if he is, at least he fought it this time. And he’s not going back unless he has to - well, obviously one day he will have to, but not before then. Not one second before then. 

“Go to hell,” he tells the mistborn echo of his own worst thoughts, and then there’s a fucking sea serpent and Quentin’s too busy tying a rope round his waist so he can use both hands to fling battle magic to even hear if the whispers carry on. 

Which, despite the  _ sea serpent, _ is more of a relief than Quentin cares to admit.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


The Darkness is defeated - Quentin is sure there’s an explanation as to how, but he’s busy pressing close to Kirel in a dark corner, kissing till they’re both breathless and giddy with survival, so he doesn’t hear it. Eustace returns to them a human boy, and Reepicheep discovers the sea is no longer salt water. Aslan’s country is ahead, they all know it, and Caspian and the Pevensies prepare a boat, Eustace helping while Reepicheep practically quivers with excitement.

“We have to take you with us,” Caspian reminds Quentin, not unkindly.

Quentin knows this already, of course. He remembers, yet again, the Narnia quartet back home, the very strong implications that Aslan was supposed to be Jesus. C.S. Lewis was a theologian, just because he died before he said so either way hasn’t stopped fantasy fans and scholars from debating the issue. For him, now, the idea is mostly just… weird. 

He’s met gods from multiple pantheons. He’s killed them or helped kill them, or just watched the Monster do it and come away with their blood on his skin. Funnily enough, despite all claims to the contrary in some myths, gods do bleed red, not golden ichor.

But a lion deity who the books at least imply is Jesus? That is… still somewhat outside Quentin’s frame of reference, even accounting for Ember and Umber and Questing Creatures. Mostly, Quentin finds himself hoping that Lewis was bullshitting the same way Plover did because otherwise this is going to be… 

Awkward is the best word he can think of. 

There’s nothing for it but to see what happens, though, so Quentin piles into the rowboat with Caspian, Lucy, Edmund, Reepicheep, and Eustace. Eustace does most of the talking as they go, about being a dragon and what he’d learned, about how Aslan had turned him back. Quentin listens, but mostly he focuses on what he can see and feel. The sunlight warm on his skin, the cool water and the softness of the lily petals. Their scent on the air. 

The way Lucy’s shoulder occasionally bumps his with the motion of the boat and how he can feel the closeness of everyone on the boat. 

The sounds of the water and the wind. 

If he is about to be sent back to the Asphodel Meadows, then Quentin wants to make as vivid a memory of his last minutes in Life as he possibly can. Because it was worth it to try, because the worlds are beautiful in a way he’d known only fleetingly in his first life, and if this second one is to be so brief, he wants at least to go back into Death with this knowledge in his very bones. He thinks he is owed that fucking much at least, by himself if nothing else. 

They come aground on what is probably a sandbar, not an island - it’s so damn small - and find themselves facing a wave frozen at the cresting point, rather than crashing down to shore. Jusr over the top of it, Quentin glimpses a mountain top. The water rushes loud and he finds himself drawn to it, reaching out to touch it. He knows in that moment that on the other side is the afterlife, but a better warmer part of it than where he had been. This is a gate directly from the living world to paradise, and there is a part of Quentin that, even now, wants to let the water take him as he once let golden sparks in a grey room devour him. 

This time it would be peace. He feels it in a way he didn’t when he hugged Penny and strode to that door. That had been - he had no choice, so he might as well face it with no obvious fear. He might as well just do it and see what happened. But this… this is  _ appealing _ , this makes him  _ want  _ to move on, and that more than anything else is what makes Quentin step back. 

Because however lovely it may seem, something that makes him feel anything like a depression symptom is not a good thing. At least not for him - he also senses, somehow, that it is not for him to say if someone else in their group feels that it is time to go on, over the water.

“Aslan,” Eustace says, and when they all turn, all Quentin can think is  _ holy shit that is one big lion.  _ And he is - somehow comforted and terrified all at once, in that moment when golden cat eyes meet his own, holding his gaze. Quentin can’t look away, and he doesn’t even realize until Aslan’s gaze turns elsewhere that he’d been holding his breath.

Somehow, though, he can  _ feel  _ what Aslan is. A god, yes. Jesus? Who knows? Theology is not Quentin’s strong suit. But what Aslan  _ definitely  _ is, is a god of life and death. And because he is a god of both, he is a creature made of the in-between. Like the Neitherlands. Like the green place Quentin saw so briefly, that he suspects must be the Wood Between the Worlds. Like the Asphodel Meadows. 

Maybe that’s what Quentin is now too. Something in-between. Is that why the chill of the Meadows remains under his skin, even in warm sunlight?

"Welcome, children," Aslan says, his voice deep and rich, with love and with power. Quentin has met gods and monsters gods fear, but never has a voice rocked him so thoroughly. 

"You have done well, very well indeed. You have come far, and now your journey is at its end."

"Is this your country?" Lucy asks, and Quentin is not surprised when Aslan tells her no, his country is beyond the wave. Aslan’s country is the afterlife, a peaceful lovely part of the afterlife but death all the same.

Still, he keeps his mouth shut as Caspian asks if his father is there, and Aslan says he can only learn that himself. 

"But you should know," Aslan warns, "that if you continue, there is no return."

The words are for Caspian but Quentin can't help but feel they're for him too, a warning that this would be an afterlife he could never leave.

Caspian goes to the very edge, putting his hand in the water before turning back, declaring that he cannot go to his father and abandon the land he died for. The land and people Caspian is now responsible for. 

"I promise to be a better ruler," he tells Aslan. 

"You already are," Aslan says.

Then, Reepicheep. Who wants to go, as Quentin already knew. He watches Reep say goodbye to Lucy and Eustace, then smiles, getting on one knee. "Thank you for defending me. It was an honor to learn from you."

"You had best recall my advice, hmm?"

"I promise I will."

Then Reepicheep is gone, sailing over the crest of the wave in a tiny boat. Aslan turns to Lucy, Edmund, and Eustace. "A choice is before you, Lucy and Edmund. If you return to your world, you will never come back to Narnia."

"We have a choice?" Edmund asks, voice thin with what must be a terrible hope.

"You do indeed. Peter and Susan needed Narnia only for a time, and it is in the world you come from where they will truly thrive. You and Lucy are of different stock. You came to Narnia younger, and the change it wrought on you runs deeper. And so, a choice. You may get back on the ship and return to Narnia proper, monarchs out of legend to stand beside the Narnian Telmarine king, or return to the land of your birth. Either way, you take your chances. Your fates are less certain than that of your brother or sister."

Silence, for long moments. Edmund and Lucy talk in whispers, heads close together, and Eustace turns to Aslan. "Do I have a choice?"

"Not yet, my son. You are to return home, for a time. When next you are called to Narnia, you too will have a choice to make."

"We're staying," Lucy says, even as Eustace nods his understanding. Lucy’s eyes never leave Aslan, but Edmund’s turn quickly to Quentin's, then fix on Caspian with a desperate glitter Quentin understands all too well.

Luckily for Edmund, Caspian is looking at him in the same way. 

"Then serve Narnia well, as once you did before," Aslan says as Edmund remembers himself and turns back to the Lion. They all kneel - Caspian, Edmund, and Lucy - and Aslan breathes on them, a hot wind that ruffles their hair. 

He turns to the wave and roars, a portal appearing in the water. "Eustace?"

Eustace hugs Lucy and Edmund, has his shoulder clasped by Caspian, and shakes Quentin's hand. Then he bows to Aslan and walks through the portal, the water swirling closed behind him.

Then golden eyes turn to Quentin.

“Quentin Coldwater.”

Quentin steps away from the others, unable to keep himself from looking back once. Caspian and Edmund are solemn, but Lucy smiles at him, warm and encouraging. She has a faith unmatched by anyone he’s ever known, he thinks, and part of him envies it. Mostly, he tries to let it comfort him.

He hadn’t… meant to kneel in the sand in front of the Lion’s huge paws, but he does anyway, thinking of kneeling on a cliff above a different sea, long ago, of a crown in his hands as he told someone else to kneel. 

“You were once a King of Fillory, Son of Adam. You did not do so well in your charge, that you asked your High King to give you. Some of that was caused by things not entirely in your control, but you also were derelict in your duties.” 

“I know that,” Quentin says, staring at the sand under his knees. “I thought I was making the choices I needed to, at the time - but I know I could have done better.” Is that why none of them helped him? Because in the end, he wasn’t worth helping? He was too -

A lion’s roar, so close, is deafening. Quentin falls backward onto his ass with the shock of it, blinking up into huge golden eyes. “I tell you this not so you can berate yourself, but to do better hereafter,” Aslan rumbles. “None escape the Realm of White Trees except those who are meant to, and you were meant for this second chance at your life. All life is priceless - do not think otherwise, of yours or anyone else’s.”

“Yes, Aslan,” Quentin says because there doesn’t seem to be anything else to say. He can - can feel the force of truth in the words, down to his very bones, and maybe… maybe he can hang onto that, when inevitably his brain turns on him again?

“The world of your birth, and the successor to the realm where you were made a king, are not yet done with you, Quentin Coldwater. But for now, you are to remain here. Your lessons are not yet learned.” 

Aslan breathes on him then, a warm rushing wind, and in its wake Quentin feels the chill under his skin vanish. He feels suddenly solid, in a way he hadn’t before, not realizing till the feeling was gone that he’d still felt like he might crumble away to dust any time. Before he can say anything - a question, a thank you, he doesn’t even know - Aslan is gone, and next moment, Caspian is offering him a hand up. 

“And so you are a guest, for now,” he says, raising his eyebrows. “I could use a magician at my court. Perhaps you could teach us, if we have the skill for it?”

“Of course he wants to learn magic,” Edmund mutters from behind Caspian, Lucy’s answering giggles bright and joyful. “Wasn’t taking apart my torch to see how it worked enough for you?”

“Never,” Caspian grins over his shoulder and for a moment Quentin aches with something that isn’t jealousy so much as loss, because he’d had a smile like that turned his way before. He knows how such a smile feels on his own lips. 

But the letter in the bottle around his neck reminds him that those things are lost. This, however - the Narnian air so clear it’s almost enough to make him high without the opium of Fillory, the offer of doing magic for the Narnian court, with three monarchs he respects and likes (but who can't hurt him, not really) - this is not lost. He is alive, and staying that way. 

And if Earth and New Fillory are “not yet done” with him, well. He’ll have to deal with that when it happens, but in the meantime he can’t get to either one, there’s no reason to expect anyone to be looking for him now, so he’s going to do his best not to worry about it too much. Besides, with time differences being what they are, who knows if going back to those worlds would mean seeing his former friends again anyway? 

It’s not worth brooding on, not when he’s got a confirmed second chance in Life. Quentin is determined not to waste this one. 


	2. now we're back to the beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a window opens between worlds and the court magician of Cair Paravel is faced with the three monarchs of New Fillory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I hope this finds you well! 
> 
> Warnings for this chapter include Quentin discussing his suicide as well as his time with the Monster, specifically nonconsensual cuddling and kissing. Quentin also states his belief that this would have escalated to rape if the Monster had known about sex. Also a more general warning for Quentin being very hostile to his old friends. As ever, if I missed anything, let me know. 
> 
> Thanks always to my enablers, especially Maii who always looks over my drafts and Evelyn who gave me the prompt! Evelyn also did lovely art for the last chapter here: 
> 
> https://fishfingersandscarves.tumblr.com/post/622994866092310528/fishfingersandscarves-scene-from-return-to-the

The worst part of it all is that Quentin misses them. He knows he can't go home - literally, Narnia only seems to connect to 1940s Earth unless Aslan interferes directly, so he actually can't risk trying to go home, on top of his awareness that he has nowhere left to go if he could.

But he misses them.

He sees a pair of winged horses flying over Cair Paravel and he thinks how much Alice would love that. He reads the magical texts Coriakin gave him and thinks how Julia would itch to learn this magic. Alice and Julia would both love the royal library at least as much as he does. Whenever he compares reality to the Narnia books back home he thinks Margo would get a kick out of the differences. He even has moments of wondering what Kady or either Penny would like here.

And as for Eliot, there isn't a thing Quentin sees, from the Orchard Ruins of the first Cair Paravel to the time he visits Lantern Waste or anything in between that he doesn't wish he could show Eliot.

He wishes he could make it stop, but he can't, so he learns to live with it.

There is a lot about Narnia to distract him, in any case. His studying is only a part of it, but a good part. Quentin doesn’t know what it is, but he is better at magic in Narnia than he ever was on Earth or in Fillory. He’d have thought the opposite would be true - the spells from Coriakin’s books or that he learns from Doctor Cornelius’ library are entirely different from the ones he was taught, after all - but it works. It might be the air of Narnia, that gives energy instead of being laced with opium, or it might be his tea. If it’s the latter, he has some other thoughts about that. 

Quentin’s tea is a drink brewed from the leaves of the moonflower. Lucy’s cordial that can heal any physical injury or sickness didn’t do shit for his depression - they tried it, just to see. But Doctor Cornelius found in one of his books of herblore that the leaves of the moonflower, a plant that resembles the very rare fireflower but doesn’t quite share the same power, are used for people with what the book called ‘melancholia.’ Quentin calls it an herbal antidepressant, which tastes horrible but doesn’t seem to have any of the side effects some of the meds he’d tried on Earth did. 

If his tea is the reason he’s better at magic now, then whenever Quentin eventually finds himself on Earth again, he’s going to have some  _ questions  _ for Henry Fogg.

Of course, there is that whole thing about magic coming from pain, and Quentin supposes he can’t ask for more pain than watching his friends be willing to save everyone but him even from death. So maybe he just has more power now than he used to. Whatever it is, he’s grateful for it, because it makes him useful at Cair Paravel to be the court magician. And being useful quiets his fears that their pity will eventually run out. 

(He knows Caspian, Edmund, and Lucy actually like him. But even with his tea, some days he can’t trust that anymore, not when he knows what liking has been worth before, and when that happens, knowing that he’s  _ useful  _ quiets the worst of his thoughts.)

So Quentin learns Narnian magic, and he takes up his art again. He hadn’t drawn - in his first lifetime - since he was seventeen, and then there had been the Mosaic, but there’s something soothing about it, it’s something he can do that connects every life he’s ever lived. So his room, a ground-floor room that has one door opening into a castle corridor and one that opens out to the Orchard Ruins, is full of books and drawings. 

It’s the first place he’s ever had that was entirely his own, and if some of the drawings on the wall, on display, show the people he’s left behind, well. That’s only to be expected, isn’t it? The necklace he still wears says more than that.

Anyway, he also draws New York City and New Jersey, and the various places he visited on school trips and things, because Caspian in particular is curious about Earth, and Edmund is curious about the future. And he tries to draw the voyage - the end of the world is impossible to get right and he never shows those to anyone because he knows how pale an imitation they are. But drawing it helps him remember it, and the other adventures are fun to draw even when they weren’t fun at the time. 

In one notebook, one he keeps buried at the bottom of his deepest drawer, he draws the Underworld Library and the Asphodel Meadows. Over and over and over he draws them, so he won’t forget them. And he draws the viewing pools with the scenes he saw in them. He’s not sure if it’s cathartic or if it really only makes him feel worse. But he can’t make himself stop, either way.

In the other notebook he keeps buried in the same place, he draws every memory of life at the Mosaic he has. That one hurts, that one makes him cry afterwards almost every time he sets charcoal and color sticks to paper. But he has to do it, there’s a terrible relief in doing it, in making something tangible out of the memories.

It occurs to him that he might be doing self-imposed art therapy, which is kind of ironic given that being forced into art therapy by his second therapist is actually why he quit drawing as a teenager in the first place. But maybe not being forced into it makes all the difference, because for the most part, it does help. 

He draws and he studies, and he works on his swordsmanship and his archery in the practice yards with two kings, a queen, and a castleful of guards. Sometimes it occurs to him that this is the life he might have had in Fillory once, at least some of the time, but it doesn’t matter now. 

And he mends. Quentin remembers how the  _ Dawn Treader _ had come to feel more his with every mending he cast, so he does all kinds of odd repair jobs across the castle, and slowly on road trips around the kingdom. Junior cowboy camp proves useful once more - he can ride, and he gets much better as weeks become months. 

Kirel, after their return, took a job as a palace guard. He lives in barracks, but sometimes he makes his way to Quentin’s room, to his bed. It isn’t love and never will be, but it’s a warm addition to their friendship. In a way it’s a relief for Quentin, to have a lover who will never claim his heart but who isn’t as indifferent as Poppy or simply equally fucked up like Emily was. 

(Although of the two, Quentin remembers Emily more kindly than Poppy.)

Narnia isn’t home, it will never be home, but he has a place here, and that is more than he can expect elsewhere.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


It’s over a year after the  _ Dawn Treader _ returned, nearly two years in total since Quentin's arrival, when they first find the window. At first Quentin thinks little of it. Windows to other worlds aren’t common, but they happen - Caspian reached out to Old Telmar right after returning from their voyage and discovered that the window there is still open. The Telmarines who left from Narnia to their island on Earth have actually been in contact with the Telmarines of Telmar, through it. 

It has occurred to Quentin once or twice that he could get back to Earth through the Telmar Window, as they call it, but… Bad idea. He has absolutely no idea what time period ‘New Telmar Island’ is in, so better not to risk it. 

There are rumors of windows to other worlds entirely, so when one is found near Lantern Waste it’s not such a surprise. “I should think the barrier is thin there, since it’s where our Wardrobe once connected to Narnia, and Professor Kirke said that’s because the tree its wood was related to grew nearby,” Lucy says. “I wonder if it’s Earth again?” 

“If it is, we’ll find out soon enough,” Edmund declares, and he’s the one who leads a party through the window to explore. Quentin can’t go because he’s in the middle of a complex mending project down by Beruna, or he would have done so. Inter-world travel is the sort of thing where a magician is useful, if you can find one.

He comes back a few days after Edmund returns and finds himself summoned to the Kings’ study. That’s not so weird, but the look on Edmund’s face has Quentin very concerned. “Er, what is it?” he asks, dropping into a chair when Edmund waves for him to sit down. “Where’d that window go to?” 

“New Fillory,” Edmund says, and the bottom drops out of Quentin’s stomach.  _ You knew this was coming, _ he reminds himself fiercely, and braces to hear that the king is, is the descendant of one of his former friends, someone with the right last name and maybe even looking like them but - “New Fillory, where you are, among other things, named a Prince posthumously.” 

“I - what? What?” Quentin says, completely wrong-footed. Which, of course, is why Edmund led with that, damn him. 

“New Fillory is ruled by High King Margo and her fellow monarchs, King Eliot and Queen Alice. Queen Alice’s consort is the Grand Duchess Kady, who was not present at the time and is apparently never to be addressed by that title on pain of exploding battle magic, so said King Eliot. High King Margo informed me that the fancy titles are to make their subjects take them all seriously, and not for any other reason. We’ve opened diplomatic relations, and I want to tell them our court magician is their late Prince before they come here to be officially welcomed, but I couldn’t in good conscience do that without telling you first.” 

“I -” Quentin starts, then stops, getting up to pace the floor between two stuffed bookshelves. “I - Edmund -” 

“I asked them how Prince Quentin died,” he says, quiet and immovable like he sometimes gets. Quentin has read the books by now, the histories and legends of the Golden Age, and while Edmund and Lucy are much more real, much more human than the tales of Edmund the Just and Lucy the Valiant allow for, sometimes Edmund is every bit as ruthlessly persistent as he was said to be. “They told me he died saving them and saving magic before New Fillory was even born, but that it was his spell that allowed them to create it, that the three of them who rule now were a quartet with him once in Old Fillory. So they made him a Prince, and refuse to have a fourth monarch.”

“So now I’m a tragic legend, not just a tragic story,” Quentin grits out. “What does that change, Edmund?” 

“The look on King Eliot’s face when I asked about you is one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever seen, Quentin,” Edmund says, and Quentin clenches his fists so hard he feels his nails draw blood. 

“They could have saved me and they didn’t,” he says, aching. “Maybe they shouldn’t have but other people got saved and they didn’t even really consider it for me. Maybe I didn’t deserve it because I killed myself but how can - just because they’re sad about me doesn’t mean I should go back. Doesn’t mean there’s a place for me, the living actual person who was a hell of a lot more trouble than a pretty little tragedy. I’ve made a good place here, haven’t I?” 

He spins back around to look at Edmund, who is watching him with an infuriating calm, dark eyes steady. “Aslan said Earth and New Fillory weren’t done with you,” Edmund reminds Quentin softly. “I don’t know if this is it, Quentin, but I think perhaps you are due a reckoning. Maybe only for your own sake, so you can finally begin to heal from all of this. But before this is over, at least some of them will be in Narnia, and it would be very odd if monarchs whose rule was cemented by their magic learned that we had a court magician who refused to meet them.” 

“I have a choice?” 

“Caspian insisted. You are under our protection here, and if you don’t feel safe, we will not force the issue. But I think it would be cowardly and foolish not to just get it over with. They can’t force you to go back with them, and they can’t really reject you, can they? You have a place here with us, that you earned before we even got back to Narnia proper. You’ll never be in a more secure place to deal with the situation.” 

_ Oh, fuck you, you have no idea what this is like,  _ Quentin thinks, but he doesn’t say it. Edmund is one of his kings, for one thing, and for another, he might be mentally in his thirties but he still looks barely eighteen. Quentin is physically about twenty-seven - it just doesn’t feel right to curse out someone who looks like he’s barely done high school.

“And it would be good for diplomatic relations if you can use this to strengthen ties somehow,” Quentin says, acidly. 

“Well, yes, but that always was one of my best areas,” Edmund says, unruffled. 

Quentin scowls. “I need to think about this. Your Majesty. Can I go?” 

“Of course,” Edmund says. “Quentin - you are our friend. If I thought this would truly harm you, we’d figure something out. But I think it will be for the best, for all concerned. You all deserve some kind of closure, don’t you think?” 

Quentin thinks that whatever closure any of them needed, Margo got it at the bonfire, while Eliot and Alice got it at the well. Kady never liked him enough to  _ need  _ any closure. As for himself, he doesn’t want to bother with the confrontations. He’d rather just keep building his new life, separate and away from them as it should be. But all he says is, “I don’t know what any of us deserve,” he says, because that is also true. 

What  _ anyone  _ deserves is way outside what Quentin knows.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Quentin’s favorite place in Cair Paravel is actually the Orchard Ruins, all that remains of the first Cair Paravel. Edmund and Lucy don’t like it, which Quentin gets - it was their home, when it was whole, and in their shoes he probably wouldn’t like it much either. 

(If Fillory still existed, if the Mosaic still existed, Quentin would not want to go there, and he figures it’s roughly the same thing.)

And so Quentin wanders the ruins, sits on the furthest left of the broken stones that were once the four thrones of Cair Paravel, and thinks about four thrones in Whitespire, and the one on the furthest left that once belonged to him. That he barely even used, even though - 

_ “Do I get to be a king?”  _

_ “Unless you want me to pick Penny.”  _

And they made his ghost a fucking Prince. Like Julia’s daughter’s middle name, Quentin supposes he should be touched. But he just  _ aches  _ \- with time, the thought of that little girl hurts too, despite his initial bitchy judgmental reaction. It hurts, that they’re willing to memorialize him like they loved him, but no one even summoned his ghost to see if he was at peace or whatever. 

It  _ fucking hurts, _ and Quentin had almost stopped hurting, had almost gotten it down to just… melancholy, to a quiet loss more companion than wound. 

“You know, people would stop calling you a ghost if you hung about the ruins a little less.” 

Quentin looks up in time to see Caspian stepping out onto what would have been the floor of the throne room, once. “That ‘ghost king’ nonsense isn’t my fault, that was whichever people off the  _ Dawn Treader _ crew thought it was funniest.” 

“But you can talk to ghosts,” Caspian says blandly. 

“No, just see them sometimes,” Quentin murmurs. Here, sometimes, he can see the faint outlines of people and Animals and fauns, centaurs and dryads. Four monarchs on four intact thrones. He sees it in other places too, the imprints of what came before. Just brief images, and they don’t mean much. Just a reminder that he’s still a little in-between and always will be. “Do you want me to speak to them? Try and create as strong a tie for Narnia as possible?” 

“Actually, I wanted to know how the repairs at Beruna went.” 

Quentin blinks, and then laughs, bright with relief. Because, yes, OK, he can do that, he can report to one of his kings about his last assignment and how it went. So he tells Caspian about the water-wheel, first, and then - “Truthfully, the wheel was an easy fix, but I just kept finding stuff, and since I was there already, why not?” 

Caspian has turned out to have a minor aptitude for magic after all. Not mending - he’s actually really, really bad at that, but Quentin’s pretty sure Caspian would be a naturalist if he were tested by Brakebills. It’s not the most kingly of hobbies, but he is an excellent gardener, and somehow nothing he grows, or even fields he walks, seem to get more than the most mild cases of disease or pests. 

Mostly, Quentin has been able to teach him little cantrips for light or cleaning up - he suspects the latter sees a lot of use with Edmund, who picked up the handful of battle magic spells Quentin knows like he was born to it but can’t cast anything else at all. Not that it’s the mess of  _ battle magic _ Quentin thinks the kings have to clean up together, but that is one of those things very much not his business.

Lucy, Quentin suspects, would have more talent for magic than either of them, but so far at least she’s said she has no interest. “I’ve not had the best luck with spells cast on my own account,” is all she’ll tell him, and Quentin decides not to push the issue. His books are always available to any of them, if they want, so that’s all he can do. 

“Why not indeed,” Caspian says, eyeing Quentin thoughtfully. “If you were to leave us, would the places where you’ve mended things pine for you, do you think?” 

“I don’t intend to leave, Your Majesty,” Quentin says evenly. 

“You know you will eventually. Aslan said as much.” 

Yes, Quentin does know that. He’s done his best not to think about it, but he does know it. “And you all think this is likely the start of that, then?” 

“It’s the start of a reckoning, anyway. I envy you - you’re a grown man facing yours. I was only seventeen.” 

_ And you’re only in your early twenties now, _ Quentin thinks, irritably.  _ My son was only setting out on his adventures at your age. _ But he pushes the thought aside. In some ways, he feels more the old man here in Narnia than he ever did before, and he’s not sure why. Maybe something about dying and coming back brought all of him more strongly into focus? Maybe it’s spending time with Edmund and Lucy, who also know what it’s like to be in a body younger than their minds?

“I guess it is,” he says finally. “You might as well let Edmund know that he can tell them about me. I don’t want to cause more of a scene than I’ll have to by also  _ surprising  _ them. There will be at least a little one, unfortunately.”

Caspian leans against a half intact pillar, folding his arms. “Why would there be any scene at all?” 

Quentin meets his eyes squarely. “Because I’m not giving them the advantage. Unless you or Edmund or Lucy chooses to command me to go to New Fillory, they won’t see me until they come here.” Here, to Cair Paravel, where Quentin knows the kitchen and the library down to their foundations, where he knows the feel of weapons in the armory repairing themselves under his magic, where he cast firework spells in the Great Hall at all the holidays. 

He is the court’s magician, not a king - and not a fucking prince either - but that only makes every place his magic has touched partway his. Narnia is not his home for good, but it is the safest place he’s known in a long time. 

It’s enough his that he refuses to meet his one-time friends anywhere else, unless he has no choice. Edmund had a point about this being his home ground, not theirs. Or close enough.

“That’s fair, but I still don’t see why there’d be a scene.” 

“That’s because you don’t know them,” Quentin says, curling his hands into fists. Maybe Edmund is right. And even if he isn’t, maybe there’s no point to fighting it anymore.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


“It’s very nice, New Fillory,” Kirel says that night, stretched out in Quentin’s bed. Quentin, lying next to him, huffs in irritation. 

“Oh, is it really?” 

“Mm-hmm. A bit odd. There were trees that grew knives and some kind of food - the kind you described called pizza, I think. But the court is lively, the Mother Priestess Fen who showed the rest of our party around was kind.” 

“I never knew Fen that well,” Quentin says, absently. “But that sounds more or less accurate. Did you see the monarchs at all?” 

“In passing only,” Kirel says. “They weren’t interested in the likes of us - oh, I did see King Eliot practicing in the yard. He’s a fair swordsman, actually. I think you’re faster but he might be technically more skilled. I saw you, though.” 

Anything Quentin might have asked about Eliot flees from his mind at that moment. “What do you mean, you saw me?” 

“There are paintings. Of various things, but one set is several moments from the coronation of the Last Earthborn Rulers of Old Fillory.” Kirel says that like a title, so Quentin imagines the words capitalized. Maybe it is. Between Eliot, Margo, and Alice, they’re all more than smart enough to understand the power of making a mythology for themselves, to support their rule. 

“And they bothered to include me?” 

“You even looked like yourself, though I didn’t realize your hair used to be brown. I prefer the white, honestly. But they speak of you as a tragedy, and there are rumors that one of the monarchs uses magic to try and recover you,” Kirel says.

Quentin sits bolt upright. “They what?” 

“I was an outsider there, Quentin,” Kirel says gently, sitting up and resting a hand on Quentin’s knee. “It was just a rumor, and I don’t know which of the three, though the odds seemed to favor King Eliot. But some definitely believe he is trying to reach you in the afterlife.” 

“Well, they’re wrong. He had a way right in his hands and he threw it down a pit,” Quentin says, the bitterness so strong he can actually  _ taste  _ it. Impulsively, he leans over and kisses Kirel. “I can’t - can we just -” 

Kirel sits back, stroking Quentin’s hair back. It’s long again now, and during the day Quentin wears it twisted back into a knot at the nape of his neck, but at night it falls loose around his face. “You want to forget for a little while?” 

“God yes,” Quentin breathes, and then Kirel kisses him back, twisting a hand in Quentin’s hair till it actually hurts a little. But he wants it to, times like this. They both know it, they both understand wishing for impossible things, but they always insist on admitting it out loud. 

No lies or pretty excuses between them. 

It’s probably the most honest relationship Quentin’s ever had. He’s pretty sure that, having been in love twice, that’s pretty sad. But Alice had been… both of them trying too hard, in the wrong ways, and then he fucked it up spectacularly and then one of them was hurting the other at every turn before, well… 

(It has occurred to him that he made her watch him die, after he had to watch her become a Niffin and then set a cacodemon on her. It has occurred to him that this is fucked up.)

As for Eliot, Quentin had thought that was an honest, lifelong relationship - a fucking marriage - but look what happened when they got back. Look how Eliot still didn’t believe Quentin had really loved him, had only been able to say they’d loved each other in their other life when Quentin was  _ dead _ . 

Is it any wonder that all Quentin wants now is what he has with Kirel? They’re friends who are sometimes lovers, and it’s safe because he’ll never be heartbroken again. 

If sometimes he thinks he loses something by not trying for actual love, well. It’s a cost-benefit ratio thing. Quentin is too old, too tired, and too unwilling to set this second life aflame to really  _ want  _ love again. It’s never really done him any good. He prefers softer, quieter feelings now. 

_ Prefer  _ might be too strong a word. He doesn’t have the  _ nerve  _ to risk more, now. All he can think of is the constant burning of hosting a Niffin under his skin, or big familiar hands wrapped around his throat. And then, two people dropping a letter down a well, when he - when he’d -

There’s really no point, and if this is all he’ll ever have again, a friend pressing him down to the sheets, warmth and pleasure but nothing stronger, well. Like so many other things, it’s better than he had, at the end of his first life, and that is enough to make it a blessing, isn’t it?

  
  


<><><>

  
  


It takes four months of negotiation before the monarchs of New Fillory come to Narnia for an official visit. At some point during one of Edmund’s business trips there, he tells them about Quentin. Quentin doesn’t know what the reactions were; he asked that Edmund not tell him, because he doesn’t want to fool himself into thinking it actually matters. 

Quentin doesn’t go to the official first meeting, carefully orchestrated to take place at the gates of Cair Paravel so as to avoid the Narnian monarchs seeming to put themselves above their equally royal guests. He watches from one of the towers, though. 

They stand out. Well, of course they do, the entire display is for them. But still - Margo in bright clothes, Eliot’s height and Alice’s pale hair (why isn’t Eliot in clothes as bright as Margo’s, he’s in black for some reason?). They stand out, they draw Quentin’s eyes as they always have, as if he were that nervy little first year again. He notices Kady isn’t with Alice, despite being her consort; maybe she’s on Earth or she’s the regent they left in place at the new capital, unimaginatively called Wavespire because like Cair Paravel it’s by the sea. 

Eliot looks up, and it’s as if he knew somehow where to look, it seems like he’s staring right up at Quentin’s window. Quentin knows that in his Narnian clothing and with his white hair twisted back into its usual knot, he is unrecognizable, but he still turns away. He still hurries from the window, heart pounding.

Damn it. It’s not fair. It shouldn’t  _ matter this much, _ not anymore. 

He leaves the little tower room, wishing that it didn’t matter at all.

Most of Quentin’s clothing is practical, sensible, and comfortable. Soft tunics and trousers, comforting layers and textures. Despite being the court magician, he has very little in the way of court clothes. But tonight his kings have told him his presence is required at the welcoming ball, so that’s what he puts on, dark red tunic and high-collared jacket, black trousers. He wears his hair down too, white hair falling to his shoulders and standing out against the dark colors. 

He never really thought about his looks before, because he didn’t like it. He usually still doesn’t, but tonight… 

He looks unsettling, dark colors and white hair, and he actually does care about the effect, just this once. Of course, he only knows about it because Kirel once mentioned it. But still, he does know, doesn’t he? And, knowing, he sort of feels like playing the ghost king some of the castle guard and staff have named him.

So he goes down to the welcoming ball in his dark clothes with his necklace around his neck, and keeps to the shadows. He’s a little late, on purpose, so he just slips into the ballroom, leaning against a pillar to watch. Eliot is dancing with Lucy, Edmund with Alice, and Caspian with Margo. They all seem to be getting on well, though Eliot in particular keeps glancing around the hall. Luckily, Lucy is the least likely to be insulted of the three Narnian royals - although Margo and Alice are doing it too. 

Quentin eases further back into shadow, tension coiling in his gut. He watches as the royals switch partners, till every possible pair have danced together. So far, the only one who’s spotted him is Lucy, and she looks concerned rather than irritated. Quentin manages a smile for her, though he knows it’s a weak one. 

This is a bad idea. He’d told Caspian there would be some kind of scene, he’d  _ told him _ , why the fuck did he come to this thing? If they spot him here, the only one who might hold off long enough to find some privacy is Alice, and that only because she doesn’t like being the center of attention either. But then, she’s been a fucking Queen of New Fillory for however long it’s been on their end - from the looks of them, not that far off from the almost two years since Quentin’s return from the dead, but he can’t be sure exactly. It’s entirely possible attention doesn’t bother her anymore. 

As for Eliot and Margo, well, they fucking thrive on it. 

Though, really, maybe they won’t even bother. They didn’t bother when he was dead, Margo at least barely paid him any mind when he was last alive, and Alice only kept noticing him then because he asked her to date again. She’s with Kady now, so that reason for interest is irrelevant. So maybe they’ll leave him alone, it is easier that way.

That, of course, is when Caspian, seated now on his throne, beckons to him. With a sigh, Quentin steps away from the shadow of the pillar and crosses to the dais, keeping to the side of the room so he won’t collide with any of the dancers. He stops next to the throne. “What is it? I’m here, just as you and Edmund commanded.”

“Yes, looming in a corner like you’re a dark wizard of the old tales,” Caspian says dryly. “They asked after you.” 

“Did they? Good for them.” 

Caspian looks at him, only the tiniest frown suggesting disapproval. “What if you’ve misjudged them?” 

“Then it’s been almost two years for me, and probably nearly the same for them. Too long to go back, and I don’t even want to.” 

“That’s unusually closed-minded of you,” Caspian says, and that’s when Quentin sees Edmund look their way before turning to - oh fuck, bring Eliot, Margo, and Alice back over to the fucking dais, why.

“Were you not paying attention to the whole ‘there will be a scene’ thing I mentioned?” Quentin hisses, deliberately staring up over everyone’s heads. His fists are clenched so tight his fingers ache, though.

“If you are going to hide, you leave us no choice,” Caspian says.

“Damn you both,” Quentin mutters.

“Is that any way to talk about your kings?” Caspian points out mildly, then smiles at his visitors while Edmund comes to stand next to Quentin. 

“My God, at least look at them, you look like a statue.” 

“I look like a dead man, isn’t that what I am?” Quentin murmurs back, but he forces himself to shift his gaze. He came face to face with a Lion who is the most powerful god he’s ever met, surely he can make himself look at his one-time friends?

They’re looking at him.

He doesn’t understand the _way_ they’re looking at him. They look - surprised, shocked even, and that brings a twisting bitter smile to his lips because that is exactly what he wanted if they did see him, he wanted to shock them with the changes in him, the white hair and the way even now he’s thinner than he was, sharpening his face and even making him look a little taller.

But they look - they look like - like seeing him is a good thing, a happy thing they never thought they’d have. Like he’s someone they actually care about. Except he knows that’s bullshit.

He doesn’t hear whatever Caspian and Edmund say, sound echoing oddly in his ears as he stares at them. Margo looks the best of the three, confident and at ease more even than she used to be. Alice is more relaxed too, all coiled energy but like she’s comfortable with it now, the power under her skin. And Eliot? He’s back to his old polished beauty and grace, but there’s something new to it, a sharpness Quentin can’t explain. 

All three of them start to look confused as Quentin continues to not speak, as he keeps smiling in a way he knows isn’t pleasant. Then finally Margo says, and this Quentin hears clearly, “I think the four of us need to speak privately.” 

“Of course,” Caspian says. 

“No,” Quentin says, voice flat. Then he clears his throat. “My apologies, but I actually can’t stay, I have an experiment I have to check on. Now. Right now. If you’ll excuse me.” He doesn’t wait for an answer, just turns on his heel and walks away. He manages, at least, not to break into a run until he’s out in the corridor.

He hears someone behind him, hears voices calling his name, but he ignores it. Then his feet go out from under him and he lands on - ice? “Are you fucking kidding me,” he mutters, slipping as he pushes himself up to hands and knees. A hand comes into view, large and familiar, silver rings gleaming in the torchlit hallway.

“Let me help you up. Margo overdid it a little, but you did run away from us, Q, we’re a little upset.” 

Q. No one has called him that since the day he died.

Quentin glares up at Eliot, who is smiling at first, despite worried eyes. But the smile drops away as Quentin stares at him, rage as icy as the floor under him all but choking him. “Back off,” he says, voice low enough to be a growl. “Back the  _ fuck  _ off.”

“What the fuck is your problem, Coldwater? Did you come back shadeless again? It didn’t sound like it from how Edmund talked about you,” Margo says. 

Quentin edges back enough that he can get to his feet on actual floor, the ice patch a moat between them now. He had to fucking crawl backwards in front of them thanks to Margo’s little Elsa moment, and he turns his glare on her next. “Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” 

“We’d… like what?” Alice says before Margo can. 

“If I was shadeless. Actually, no, I’m wrong, it’s you who’d like it. Perfect reason to  _ lay me to rest _ yet again, right?” Quentin spits. 

“What - Q -” Eliot starts. 

“No. I am not your friend. I am certainly not your  _ prince _ ,” Quentin says, flat and cold. “You don’t get to call me a nickname like I actually mean something to you, and I have no interest in any private discussions,  _ Your Majesties. _ I am the court magician of Cair Paravel, and in that capacity, if you wish to discuss Narnian magic, fair enough. But I would prefer if you simply left me alone, and once you go home, I never want to see you again. Now, if you will excuse me.”

If he was still the idiot who had cared so much about them, enough to plead with Penny for one last look at his own funeral, he’d feel guilty at the way they all look stricken, literally as if he’d slapped them across the face. If he were as cruel as he’s acting, he’d enjoy knowing that he’s hurt them. 

He’s neither, unfortunately. He just feels numb, and his eyes burn. But he’s shocked them, and that’s enough to give him time to run again, three corridors and a secret shortcut so that they can’t find him again. He stops then, leaning heavily against the wall, and is surprised to find there are tears on his cheeks. 

Well, shit. He just hopes he wasn’t crying in front of them. Crawling was shame enough, wasn’t it?

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Quentin manages not to see any of their… royal guests for three days, mostly by staying in his room pretty much exclusively. It’s childish and he knows it, but he also doesn’t care. The fact that he’d ended up crying without even realizing it is clear proof that he can’t trust his control around his one-time friends.

To hell with whatever reckoning or closure Edmund and Caspian seem to think he might achieve. All he wants is to regain his hard-won peace, and that won’t happen until the New Fillory contingent is gone again. He can’t even sleep, every night broken by repeats of those nightmares from back on the Dawn Treader. The ones where all the people he used to love either kill him themselves or find him hurt and leave him to die. 

Only now Margo freezes him to death, and Eliot offers him a hand only to let go the second Quentin takes it, letting him fall screaming into an abyss.

He wakes up crying, every single time. He’s exhausted, and sick of being exhausted. If he’d known  _ this  _ would be the result of seeing them again, he would have told Edmund to say nothing about him and hidden somewhere for the duration of the royal visit. But it’s too late now, and he’s had nightmares before. It’s only been three days. Maybe it’ll stop.

But for now, he’s out of moonflowers for his tea, and he needs to go pick more because the last thing he wants under the circumstances is to also be without his herbal antidepressants. That would - not be good, when he’s already so fucked up. So in the middle of the day, when it’s least likely that anyone will be out and about in the Orchard Ruins when activity is at a high elsewhere, Quentin goes out to his little garden where he grows herbs for spells and potions. Not to mention the ingredients for a wake-up tea that works as well as coffee, and of course his moonflowers.

He picks enough herbs for the wake-up tea too while he’s there, because caffeine withdrawal, while less of an actual risk, is certainly not going to improve his mood. 

“Finally came out of your den, huh?”

The irritated, almost mocking voice sets Quentin’s teeth on edge, and though he gets to his feet, he refuses to turn around. Mostly because he knows Margo will  _ hate  _ that. 

“Was there something unclear about the meaning of _ I have no interest in any private discussions _ ?” he asks, staring out over the edge of the cliff, to the stretch of water between the island and mainland where, once, the newly-returned Pevensies saved a Dwarf before he could be drowned. 

“Yeah, why you’re being such a dick to us, with no fucking reason.”

“What did you expect? A happy little reunion? The negotiations for your visit took  _ four months _ , Milady High King,” Quentin points out ruthlessly, still staring fixedly at the horizon. “Do you really think, if I wanted to do that, I would have waited? I’d have been through that window like a shot.” He curls a hand around his necklace, the familiar little bottle warming under his touch. 

“Yes!” There’s something odd in Margo’s voice - if she were someone else he’d say it was almost a quaver, but this is Margo Hanson, and she washed her hands of him before he’d even died anyway. She wouldn’t be about to cry, not over him. “When Edmund told us what had happened - you’re not the only one who got out around the giant fucking hole Rupert tore open. We spent months cleaning up that mess. Zombies, weird undead shit, things like Niffins but not quite… and a few, just a few actual people with a second chance. But none of them were you.”

“Except one was.” 

“And for almost two years we didn’t know that. It was - like mourning you all over again. Eliot… He’d just been starting to steady out, and then he spiraled again. And now! It was like a fucking miracle when Edmund told us, then we get here and you treat us like monsters, just as that hope shattered two years of learning how to deal with the hole you left -” 

“Oh, what hole?” Quentin sneers, spinning around. “Please. You were all fine after what, a month? Burn a few tokens in a campfire, toss a couple more down a well, sing a stupid song and have a few hugs. Occasionally bring up how  _ brave _ I was, what you  _ learned  _ from my sacrifice - you know, when you said that bullshit before you almost died, I waited a bit. If you’d died I would have tracked you down, taken you with me when I got out. Not sure why, but I couldn’t have left you there. But maybe that would have ruined the lesson I supposedly taught you.” 

Margo stares at him, shock and fury on her face, and Quentin presses forward before she finds her words. “What? Did you forget that a real person doesn’t slot into your pretty little stories like a tragic ghost does? Well, why don’t I ruin it the rest of the way for you? I wasn’t  _ brave _ , it wasn’t a _ sacrifice _ , I fucking  _ committed suicide. _ And sure, I always knew you’d be better off without me, but I never thought the people who supposedly cared about me would refuse to even admit I offed myself. That one was a surprise.”

Margo shakes her head, but she’s gone pale. She almost looks sick. “Quentin. We didn’t refuse to admit it, we didn’t know.” 

“How could you not know?! I spent months with that thing wearing Eliot’s face! It dragged me around like a rag doll! It broke my arm and threw me into walls and even that was better to when it petted me or decided to cuddle me in my bed or took me to sink a body and fucking  _ kissed me over the corpse! _ The only reason it didn’t fucking  _ rape me _ is that it didn’t know what sex was yet! Except oh, right. No one cared about any of that either.” 

“Why didn’t you tell someone?” Margo asks, horrified.

“Oh, when was I supposed to do that? When Julia and Alice were trying to convince me to banish it and basically kill Eliot? When you came back and the only fucking thing you could say to me besides repeating your goddamn axe story fifty fucking times was to  _ grow a pair of tits? _ That’s some other way of saying grow a backbone, right? Well now I have. How do you like it, Margo?”

“If we didn’t know then you can’t blame us for not -” 

“No one asked either! Julia saw half the shit, saw me come back catatonic, you should have known how much it would hurt just to  _ look at it _ in his body, God knows you ran away as fast as you could! You think I don’t get that not telling someone is on me, that suicide, by definition, makes my death my fault? I am not stupid, Margo. My choices were mine in the end. I killed myself and I saved myself. It turns out I didn’t need any of you, and now I don’t want you anymore. Because I learned, in the moment I saw that Penny’s pervert ghost buddy was worth saving, that time magic was worth it for Fen and Josh, for Julia…” He doesn’t mention the guy in Eliot’s head, because no one wants two people in one brain, he figures that’s a different circumstance. 

He shakes his head. “Time magic was worth it for all four of them, one way or another. But me? A thirty-second conversation and the whole idea was dismissed.” 

“Wait a fucking second. You’re mad that we didn’t save you?” Margo demands, hands on her hips. “It sounds like you saw everything from the other side, did you miss the part where Rupert destroyed Fillory trying to get his boyfriend back? Do you really think you’re worth killing a world for?” 

Quentin laughs, a harsh bitter sound that hurts his throat. “Do you have any listening comprehension skills at all?” he asks. “I -” 

“Take the fucking condescension and stick it up your ass, Coldwater.” 

“If you were listening, you’d know I didn’t mention that. I talked about the time magic.” 

“Again! If we undid what you did, magic would have never come back and Everett would have killed us all! We were supposed to trade all our lives just so that you could die again right beside us?” Margo shakes her head. “That doesn’t sound like you, you can be a selfish little fuck just like the rest of us, but not like that, so what are you getting at here?”

“Eliot had a fucking letter, do you really think it was impossible to send a message that would only save me?” Quentin snaps. “Maybe it was, but no one can know because no one really thought about it. No, I didn’t want anyone to die for me. But I did think I was worth a little research. Worth more than thirty seconds of discussion about a method used for  _ multiple other people _ in the months after I died.”

Margo scowls, throwing her hands up in frustration. “So what do you want? An apology? We can’t make this right if you screech at us every time we see you.” 

“I don’t want you to make it right!” Quentin screams, and oh goddamn it, he feels on the verge of tears again. “I don’t want anything from you anymore. I learned my lesson two years ago. Why can’t you just accept that and leave me alone?”

“Because you’re ours, Quentin. I don’t know what to make of half of what you’ve just said but - you can’t possibly want to leave it like this.” Margo steps forward, reaching out to touch his arm, and Quentin jerks back. 

“I am not yours! You buried me and let me go! So _ let me go _ .”

“No. If what you’re saying is true, then that’s the mistake we all made too many times. Making it again would be stupid,” Margo insists. “But for now, I’ll leave you be. Clearly you’re not up to listening right now.” 

“Now who’s being condescending?” Quentin mutters. 

“Just calling it like I see it,” Margo says, but she turns and leaves, which is all Quentin really wants from her right now. So he’ll take it. 

He drops back down, lying back in the grass and staring at the sky, trying to calm down so he doesn’t start to cry again. He is so tired of crying. And apparently they’re not going to give up. He doesn’t understand it. They gave up so easily two years ago, why can’t they just do that again? Why can’t they ever just - do what he so desperately hopes for? 

Is this some kind of punishment? Is this what Aslan meant, when he said that Earth and New Fillory weren’t done with him yet?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come chat with me on tumblr at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or on Twitter at @Fae_Boleyn!


	3. try to know who your friends are

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are arguments, dancing, and swordplay, and Quentin spends the entire time in emotional distress.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I hope this finds you well!
> 
> MAJOR warning in this chapter for blunt and sometimes cruel (possibly edging into ableism) discussion of Quentin's canonical suicide and suicidal ideation. These characters are still angry and lashing out, so keep that in mind. 
> 
> As ever, thanks to my enablers, especially Maii. Also, there is beautiful art for this story!
> 
> [Aslan and Quentin from Chapter 1](https://fishfingersandscarves.tumblr.com/post/622817339162951680/scene-from-return-to-the-sunlit-lands-which-is) by fishfingersandscarves/fishydwarrows
> 
> [Quentin in his outfit for the welcoming feast in Chapter 2](https://duchessofvodka.tumblr.com/post/624029893110415360/when-fanfiction-inspires-a-costume-design-any-way) by duchessofvodka on tumblr
> 
> Also, my newest fic, [the heart of this star-crossed voyager](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25414900), includes a missing scene from this verse that might give a little insight into things implied in this chapter. It's not necessary reading but I'd be happy if you did read it!

“So I hear you’re mad that we didn’t bring you back. What the hell is wrong with you?”

Quentin, in the middle of taking down a book from the library shelf, instead puts it back slowly, deliberately, before turning to face Alice Quinn. He’d never seen her in Fillorian - well, New Fillorian - clothes before the welcoming ball, and of course right now. She looks good, and remembering a story she once told him, he wonders if Margo had a hand in the designs. Probably. 

“If that’s how Margo put it, that’s not exactly what I said,” he says, crossing his arms. “Tell me, Alice. You were right there when Plover flat-out admitted he made up half the fucking books, remember? So what made you think you could trust that well to be what he said it was without backing it up with any other source?”

Alice goes white, with fury, Quentin thinks. Well, good. “I was trying to make up for the way I hurt you by creating that golem. Julia said I was disturbing the peace of your soul, I was trying to help you rest. Should I have let you keep hurting?” 

“It didn’t actually hurt, but my point is you could have cracked open another fucking book.” 

“Oh, that’s rich coming from you and your Fillory obsession.” 

Quentin, expecting that, rolls his eyes. “The difference being, I hadn’t heard him  _ admit how much he made up yet _ , remember? Also, how did you know Julia was right? Especially since, you know. She actually wasn’t. I had no idea anything was gone till they gave it back to me.” 

Alice’s eyes flash, a hint of triumph. Oh, she thinks she’s won a point. “So it  _ did  _ get back to you. It did work. What are you complaining about?” 

“No,” Quentin says, leaning against the bookshelf. “No, they went right into the hands of the goddess who rules the second level of the Underworld. It’s where you go after the Library branch, or places like the bowling alley Julia and I once saw. I don’t know if Penny lied when he implied I was crossing over when I left his level or if he honestly didn’t know there was another one, but the point is, cross over is level three, or so they told us in Asphodel. Maybe there’s more, like an afterlife onion.” 

“Are you getting to a point here? Because it sounds like I succeeded in what I wanted to do, the right thing to do as far as I could tell at the time.” 

There’s a part of Quentin that respects Alice’s refusal to admit she was wrong. That stands by what she claims to have thought at the time, that she was helping him. Hell, she’s as bad a liar as he is, so it’s probably even true that she did believe she was doing the best thing she could for him. Maybe that should be comforting, but all it makes him think of is that old line,  _ with friends like these, who needs enemies? _

“That’s because you don’t know Lady Melinoe. It went to her, and yeah, she gave it back to me, because she knew that what I’d remember when I re-absorbed it, along with what she showed me, what she taught me to see on my own? She knew that would be the best punishment she could devise for my daring to try and escape.” Not that she hadn't included other things, but he refuses to tell Alice that. Refuses to even let himself truly remember how much it hurt when -

No. He's not thinking of that.

“You - were already trying to get back? I assumed it was getting that bit of your soul, being whole again, that reminded you there was something to live for.” 

Quentin scoffs. “What, tacos?” Inwardly, he enjoys the flicker of hurt that crosses Alice’s face. “Oh, you mean you and Julia. Right, because you believing an already-depressed twelve-year-old that his future suicide was giving you the gift of your life, plus Julia’s cute little claim that my true friends would never abandon me when that was a fucking lie is really something that would make me want to come back. Sure. OK.”

Alice stares at him. “Is this your idea of payback because I didn’t leap into your arms with joy when you dragged me back from being a Niffin? You think I punished you for saving me when I didn’t want it, so now you’re punishing me for not saving you when you did? Although, if you really did commit suicide, why would anyone think you wanted saving? Isn’t being dead what you’ve always wanted on some level?” 

That hits. Quentin actually has to stop to catch his breath, and then he says, “Then why the fuck did you ever bother with me at all, if that’s how you see suicidal tendencies?” 

“Because I loved you! I loved you, and I watched you die! You killed yourself in front of me!” Alice snaps. “Right after you  _ promised me _ we’d be a team! You had 23 drag me out and I had to watch you burn away to nothing!”

Quentin takes a deep breath. “You’re right. And I am sorry for that. However angry I am, I’m sorry I did that to you,” he says, and the honesty in it seems to startle Alice, making her eye him warily. “The truth is, I was in no state to go to the Seam. But you couldn’t have known that then, especially when I was too far gone to notice it myself.” 

Alice turns away from him. “I thought you sacrificed yourself to save us. I thought I was honoring you by carrying on - and I don’t understand where you got the idea that we won’t take you back. You have no right to be so angry because we didn’t tear the world apart for you.” 

And he’d just been starting to think maybe they’d reached a truce. “I don’t  _ care  _ anymore if you’d  _ take  _ me back, I don’t want to go back to you.  _ You  _ have no right to expect that I would!” 

Alice spins back around to face him. “We had no reason to think you wouldn’t! We thought you missed us too, we thought you must have been trying to get back to us, can you imagine what it felt like to realize -” 

“Can  _ you  _ imagine how it felt to realize other people were worth saving and I wasn’t?” 

“You were dead!” 

“So were Fen and Josh! So was Julia! So was Penny’s fucking - perverted ghost buddy! But no, thirty goddamn seconds of discussion about that letter was all it took.  _ No, because Everett, _ that’s what you said, Alice.” 

Alice glares at him. “The Quentin I knew wouldn’t want us to throw away what he did to save us all, even to save him.” 

“Is that how you justified chucking a bit of soul down a well you hadn’t even bothered to do proper research on?” Quentin asks. He can see she’s angry enough to be shaking, and so is he, and he wishes it felt good but honestly, being angry like this only makes him feel sick in the aftermath. There isn’t even any  _ relief  _ in it, but he’s still going to say it. 

He steps a little closer to her, he’s a little taller than her and he’s using that, he doesn’t even care that it’s fucked up, looming over her as much as he can manage. “I guess I should be glad you didn’t just bury it with the golem - it’s in your mom’s backyard, right?” Quentin asks, voice low and flat. He hadn’t intended to bring this up but fuck it. Fuck it. If she’s going to be on her high horse about this, why should he hesitate? 

“Did you bury it by the pool? Since you let kid-me cuddle up to you and die there, I guess it seemed like a good burial place, huh, _ Vix? _ Does living clay even decompose? I hope so, or someone’s going to have some explaining to do someday -”

Alice slaps him, hard enough that Quentin’s head snaps back and he’s sure she left a mark. To be fair, he probably did deserve it, and in a way the bright stinging pain is welcome. At least it’s real, physical pain, not just the constant weight in his head and heart. 

“You are not the person we loved, the person we mourned,” Alice hisses, eyes overbright with tears - either fury or hurt, or both, he can’t tell.

For once, Quentin’s own eyes are dry. 

“No. I’m not. And from what I heard you saying while you were  _ mourning _ , I never really was. Maybe that’s the problem. But you of all people should have known better than to think I would be anyway,” he says, remembering when she’d told him she wasn’t the girl she was, that he’d never get that girl back. 

Quentin understands that moment with Alice now, and she was right, but what makes her think she has a monopoly on being changed by dying and coming back? What makes her think she could be changed but he wouldn’t be? He’d been wrong to expect it of her, and she’s wrong to have expected it of him. And here they fucking are again, here they always are, broken mirrors of each other in ways that can only cut them up on their jagged edges.

He grabs the book he came for in the first place and pushes past Alice where she still stands, hands clenched into white-knuckled fists at her sides. He walks away and leaves her there, and he wishes he felt better even though he knew he wouldn’t. 

He’s just so  _ tired _ .

  
  


<><><>

  
  


“You know, two lives I’ve known with you, and thirty-nine I can’t remember, but I’d bet even in those I’ve never seen you as angry as you’ve been since we got here.” 

Quentin opens his eyes as Eliot settles next to him on the boulder - Eliot’s not looking at him, eyes fixed on the waves crashing against the shore. Quentin had been meditating - Doctor Cornelius suggested it, as a method he found very useful for bringing himself in touch with magic. Quentin doesn’t know if it’s helped with that, but it lets him feel calmer, especially when he does it down here with waves crashing in his ears. 

(When he was a kid, his favorite place was on top of this seawall at the beach his dad took him to, far away enough from the boardwalk that all you could hear were the waves, when you closed your eyes there was nothing but the scent and sound of the sea.)

So he’s not exactly friendly, but neither is he ‘screeching’, in Margo’s words, when he says, “Oh, do we count that one again now? I thought it wasn’t us?”

He remembers what he heard Eliot tell Alice at the well that day. _There was this timeline._ _We somehow remembered pieces of it. These beautiful pieces. We loved each other for a really long time._

But Eliot had all but forgotten him within two months, right? He couldn’t even - Quentin spent months with that thing, and Eliot couldn’t even ask questions about what exactly happened that last day to figure out if that letter would work? 

“Look,” Eliot says. “I get that you’re mad at us - mad at me. You died for me and -” 

“I didn’t die for you, Eliot,” Quentin says, and he doesn’t actually mean to be scornful but that’s how it comes out. He looks over to find Eliot looking startled, and like he’s not sure if he ought to be hurt or not. Quentin sighs, and explains, “You were already de-possessed, dumping the Monster was about revenge, partly for you but also for myself, and about the fact that honestly I wouldn’t believe the fuckers were gone if I didn’t see it happen.” 

“So you died saving all of us, in general.”

“No, I died because I was too fucked up to keep running. The thing none of you seem willing to admit is that I killed myself,” Quentin says flatly. “It wasn’t a sacrifice for anyone, it was me falling the fuck apart. These pretty stories that you all told each other or trotted out when you needed to get sympathy from evil kings or runaway death gods? None of it was ever true.”

“And that’s why you’re angry?” Eliot asks, careful.

“I’m angry because after everything - you could have asked Alice or 23 for details of how things went down, you could have made  _ sure  _ your damned letter wouldn’t work. Alice could have cracked open another book about that well, or - or - she had a piece of me and - and Julia was going to do a seance and then she just didn’t -” 

“You know, we were a little distracted by the world falling apart again.” 

“Didn’t stop you from saving four different people with one form of time magic or another,” Quentin snaps, hopping off the rock. He doesn’t want to be next to Eliot anymore. “But me? I’m just your pretty little tragic story to tell people.”

Eliot is looking at him with the strangest look in his eyes - he doesn’t seem angry like Margo or Alice, just sad. “Is that what you think?” 

“What am I supposed to think? You used me as common ground with Rupert, Alice did the same thing with Hades, Margo talked about me like I’d given some grand lesson by offing myself before my twenty-seventh birthday, and Julia kept saying she needed to make my death worth it. And then I find out about that bullshit prince thing - you don’t want me, you wanted a story you could control.” 

“Now that is bullshit,” Eliot snaps, standing up. “You can say all you want that we didn’t do enough for you, that we were too late to help you, but to say we didn’t miss you, that our grief wasn’t real, that it’s still not - the day Edmund told us about you was one of the best days of my life, it still is even though nothing since has gone well at all -” 

“It’s gone just fine for me,” Quentin says, even though it hasn’t. 

“You know what, Quentin? Be angry all you want. But don’t you dare say we didn’t actually miss you. That ‘bullshit prince thing’ was because we missed you, because making sure you’d never be forgotten seemed like the only thing we knew we could do!” 

Eliot pauses to take a few deep breaths, raking a hand through his hair. “Alice says you have my letter. I can see it there around your neck. I’m guessing you didn’t read it.” 

Quentin can’t take this. He can’t take it. Something cracks inside him, something that even he can’t fix, he thinks, and out of it something burns through him like acid. “Why would I?” he spits. “If you throw a letter away, that makes it trash, even if it gets to the person after all. Why would I read trash?”

Eliot looks like Quentin just slapped him. “That’s what you think of the last message I could ever send to you? That I hoped would reach your soul at the bottom of that well?” 

“If you missed me so much, if what you wrote matters so much, why didn’t you send the fucking letter?!” Quentin screams. How can Eliot act like the wounded party here? “I almost died trying to save Alice, I did everything I could to help Julia when she was shadeless, I dealt with that Monster torturing me to get you back, and none of you could even bother with a few hours of research! _ Why?”  _

_ What did I do wrong,  _ he almost asks, but he refuses to.  _ Why wasn’t I worth it, _ he almost asks instead, but again, no. He refuses to be that vulnerable ever again.

“Because I was afraid!” Eliot yells right back. “Because this whole fucking mess started because Jane manipulated you after I died, she saved me to get you to sign up to kill her fucking brother! And it went wrong, and went wrong, and went wrong! You died forty times, Quentin. Every single timeline, you died. I tried to save you at Blackspire, and all that happened was you got tortured for months and died anyway. I didn’t think I could do it, all right? I thought I’d just hurt you more before you died again.” 

Quentin stares and Eliot closes his eyes for a moment. When he opens them, his face is… strange. Distant, in a way Quentin hasn’t seen aimed at him since their very first meeting. “Throw it away yourself, if you really think it’s trash. But if you can read it and still believe that I at least didn’t want you back, then… then I guess there really is nothing left of what we were. I hope that’s not true. I really do.”

Eliot turns and walks away, and Quentin watches him go until he fades into the growing shadows - which happens quickly because Eliot’s in dark clothes, black and dark grey and a green so dark as to almost be more black. For the first time Quentin wonders - is that for him? Has it been, all along? 

His fingers curl around the bottle and he wonders for the first time what the letter inside it actually says. But he - he doesn’t think he can bear to find out yet. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


“I hear things aren’t going well.” 

Quentin, curled up in the tower room where he’d watched the New Fillorians arrive, looks up to see Lucy in the doorway. She comes over to sit next to him, and part of him wants to run from the understanding in her eyes, but he can’t make himself do it. 

“I never thought they would. I never wanted this. I just wanted - to start over. I wanted that to be done.” 

“Did you really? Why do you still wear that necklace then?”

Quentin touches the tiny glass bottle. It will warm under his hand if he holds it long enough, but otherwise it’s always chilly to the touch, more than glass might naturally be. He mended it in the Asphodel Meadows and sometimes he thinks that affected the magic he did. He shrank the letter in the Meadows too, but he hasn’t touched that since so he doesn’t know if the paper is oddly cold too. 

“Same reason I gave you the first time we talked about it. To remind me of things I can’t afford to forget.” 

“They love you. Anyone but you can see it, in how they look your way when you’re not looking. Or even when you are, sometimes. You can’t forgive them?” Lucy asks, and Quentin shrugs, tipping his head back against the wall. It’s a good question, but it doesn’t feel like the  _ right  _ question.

“I… probably can, over time. I - it’s not that - that isn’t the main problem at this point. I’d mostly worked it down to being no worse than melancholy about all this, until I saw them again and… I’m angry. I might be at least a little bitter forever about it, but it wouldn’t be that hard except they expected a happy reunion and it’s like they think I’m in the wrong for being angry. For daring to not want to run into their arms and go back home with them like a good little  _ pet _ .” 

Quentin sighs, looking at Lucy. “It would be easier if I hadn’t actually missed them. If I didn’t know… Like, you guys are going to take them to see the sights, and I know - I could tell you places they’d like. I’ve thought about it since I got here, things they’d enjoy. I couldn’t help it.”

“Like what?” Lucy asks. 

Quentin hesitates. But maybe - maybe it will help. Maybe one last bit of caring will make him stop caring. Maybe he won’t be angry anymore? He doesn’t think it works like that, but maybe it’ll be some little bit of the weight gone. “Alice likes horses,” he says. “So, um. She’d love seeing the winged horse roost at Fledge’s Cliffs, or meeting one of the unicorn herds. The, uh, the midsummer festival’s coming up, Eliot and Margo would both enjoy the party at Dancing Lawn.” 

He closes his eyes, unable to look at the kindness on Lucy’s face. It doesn’t help. Damn it. It  _ doesn’t help _ . His throat aches from unshed tears - why the fuck is he always crying these days - and he swallows hard. “And, uh. You know about the books that tell a fictionalized version of your stories. I read them, and Margo did too, we talked about them a few times. She’d get a kick out of Lantern Waste, seeing the famous lamppost. The book didn’t tell us it actually had roots.” 

Lucy laughs, a soft sound at a fond memory, and it eases a bit of the tight ache in Quentin’s chest. So does the feel of a smaller hand wrapping around his. “And Eliot?” she asks softly. 

Quentin thinks, for a horrible dizzying second, of the other palace orchards besides the Orchard Ruins he loves so much. Of the northwestern section he never goes near because he can’t eat peaches or plums anymore, and seeing them on trees is somehow even worse.  _ Peaches and plums, motherfucker, I’m alive in here. _ No, damn it, no. Anyway, it wouldn’t be a special place for Eliot, would it?

The trouble is, his stupid treacherous heart always wanted Eliot to see everything. Wanted to  _ show him _ everything.

He thinks of how much Eliot liked the Rainbow Bridge. The way he hated farming but found tending their little garden at the Mosaic soothing. Especially the flower garden part they’d eventually planted because it looked nice, aside from the vegetable and herb garden they’d actually needed. Eliot, who loves beautiful things. 

“The Crystal Garden,” he says finally. It’s a strange cave, actually, with vents that seem to go straight down to a land no one has explored - they can hear people singing far below, they  _ think  _ it’s the legendary Land of Bism down there - but the crystal formations look like flowers and plants and fruits, and they actually  _ grow _ .

Lucy looks thoughtful. “I’ll let Ed and Caspian know,” she says. Then, so gently Quentin has to clench his jaw against more tears, she adds, “You still love them too, don’t you? That’s the real heart of the problem.” 

Quentin nods, throat aching with his pent-up emotions. “This would all have been so easy if I really didn’t care anymore. The truth is, I’m furious and I’m hurt and I  _ miss them. _ I’ve missed them this whole time. But I don’t think I can go back, Lucy. I don’t think I can do that.”

He isn’t expecting her to hug him. But he hugs her back when she does, trying not to cling desperately, even though he feels desperate. He feels on the verge of flying to pieces. 

“It’ll be all right. One way or another, you always have a place here, so you’ll always have somewhere safe to land.” 

Later, back in his room, Quentin takes the necklace off. He’s never taken it off before, and he doesn’t know if he feels bereft or like a weight has been lifted. What had Eliot said before?  _ You can say all you want that we didn’t do enough for you, that we were too late to help you… _ Too late? They didn’t help him at all. He has questions, and no one he trusts to give him answers.

He opens the bottle and shakes the tiny letter inside out into his palm. It’s about the size of a pill, until he twitches his fingers in the tut that undoes the shrink spell. Then it sits full size in his hand, the bottle clenched tight in his other hand. 

_ So break them on purpose, _ the Monster’s voice, Eliot-but-not, echoes in his head. Quentin sets the letter down on his worktable carefully, deliberately, gently. Then, spinning fast enough to make himself a little dizzy, he flings the bottle at the stone wall, the quiet shatter echoing in his ears like a thunderclap.

Strangely, he does feel a little better now. And he knows he will, eventually, read that letter. Just - not quite yet.

Like the glass, the paper is unusually cold, full of magic cast upon it by a ghost.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


He never meant to end up at the solstice festival himself, when he’d suggested it as a place to take their visitors. But since the Restoration, as they call it, the dryads and the fauns have made an effort to include the local humans in their celebrations, and vice versa. 

And Quentin had been called out to do some magic in Owlshollow, close enough that the villagers go. They go, and they take Quentin along. Damn. He should have seen that coming, really.

So he goes, and he leans against the trunk of a tree, watching the dancing. He finds the kings and queen to whom he is currently pledged first, Lucy partnered with a lovely green-haired dryad - a willow tree, Quentin thinks from the fall of her long hair, and sure enough the pair of them slip off to where the dryad’s tree with its long curtains of leaves will hide them. 

Well, well. Good for Lucy.

Edmund and Caspian start out together as they so often do, moving together in time as easily in a dance as when they duel for fun. Quentin watches, though, as the song changes and partners spin away to new people, until - 

“We had fun with this at the autumn dance, didn’t we?” Kirel asks as he darts out from the group of dancers long enough to catch Quentin’s wrist and tow him in amongst the crowd. Quentin does not want to dance - he can spot Alice’s pale hair and the glitter of Margo’s dress by moonlight and firelight, and Eliot is always easy to find, head and shoulders above even many of the dryads. 

But they were good at this, last fall, so Quentin makes himself laugh and lets Kirel spin him around, then draw him close as the dance catches them up. They did have fun last time after all, and there’s a spark in Quentin’s blood at being so near to a lover in full view of anyone looking, the lines of their bodies pressed close. 

Spin and switch, and this is what he was worried about, because it’s Margo he’s faced with now, looking at him narrow-eyed. “You have a boyfriend?” she asks as they sidestep each other, the drums coming in with the flutes now. 

“Is that your business?” Quentin asks, and then he’s with Kirel again, and it’s wrong but they did this last year when Kirel’s first lover - predates Tom, and broke his heart - came to court. He kisses Kirel right there in the middle of the dance, and he doesn’t know what point he’s making or to who, doesn’t know if he’s even glad to make it. 

He just wanted to do it. 

The fauns clap as they weave around the humans and the dryads, taking random dancers by the hand and moving them among the throng. Quentin is caught up by a faun with bright red hair and he lets it happen, because why not, why the fuck not - 

Oh. Right. That’s why not, as the drums pound louder but also slower, the switching stops to dance with just one partner for a while, and Quentin knows that hand wrapped around his even before he looks up into blazing gold-hazel eyes. 

“We used to be good at this,” Eliot says, low voice almost a growl in Quentin’s ear. “Just once for old time’s sake, let’s not cause a scene when everyone’s having fun, Quentin.”

He’s right, of course - twice over, in fact. Quentin’s already caused one scene, and he doesn’t want to make trouble here. And, well. They were good at this, in a different world and a different life. Harvest festivals and solstices and - 

He doesn’t pull away. He doesn’t even want to. It feels like sitting in the rowboat at the end of the world, committing every moment to memory in case he was about to die again. The way Eliot’s hand in his still sends a thrill through his body, the way his eyes look by torchlight and moonlight. 

How easily they still move together, falling into sync like they’re still the men who grew old together, inexplicably young again. Young men together again, as if rejection and possession and death, rebirth and rage, didn’t stand between them. As if they still belong to the same world. 

The dance brings them close, chest to chest, and Quentin looks up as Eliot looks down. It would be so easy to close the gap between them, not kissing him is actually harder than kissing him would be, and Quentin is -

_ Oh no _ , he realizes, with a strange mix of grief and terror.  _ I’m still in love with him. _

Eliot’s face changes, the blazing look softening to something like worry, something like affection, and -

“Please don’t look at me like that,” Quentin whispers. 

“Like what?” Eliot murmurs back. “I can’t help it, you look so wounded.”

“Please,” Quentin says again. “I can’t bear it. You can’t look at me like you love me, it’s not fair.”

“Hate to break it to you, Quentin, but I do -” 

The dance shifts again and Quentin is pulled away from Eliot, not sure if he’s relieved or heartbroken not to hear what Eliot was about to say. Both, probably, and what does it matter anyway? 

_ I love you, but…  _

It’s nothing Quentin hasn’t heard from him before.

“Hey. Are you all right?” 

Quentin blinks and realizes his current partner is Caspian. He smiles at his king - his, in that Quentin first offered allegiance to him, and it matters somewhere deep down that Caspian accepted it, and gave him a home, he will always be Quentin’s king in that way. Edmund and Lucy are his monarchs too, but it’s, it’s different. 

(The trouble is, Eliot will always be his High King as much as he is the man Quentin spent a life with, and Margo will always be the High Queen who crowned him, and Alice… He and Alice are something outside of crowns, first loves and magic and death all knotted up together. The trouble is, these things will never stop being true.)

“No, but it’s an old kind of not all right,” he says with a rueful smile, and he has the oddest feeling that he’s saying goodbye to something somehow, as he and Caspian move through the quick tripping steps of this dance, then switch again and he’s back with Kirel. 

He is saying goodbye to something, as it turns out. They come together in the dark, he and Kirel, just as they did last year, on a bed of heather in the shadows beyond the bonfire. But afterwards, in the dark, Kirel says, “I think we are done, you and I. It is one thing to take a friend for a lover who understands loss, quite another to keep a lover whose heart still belongs elsewhere.” 

“I can’t give it back to him,” Quentin says softly, even though he knows Kirel isn’t exactly wrong. He hates this, it’s not fair. Why can’t he just move on? 

“My dear Quentin, I don’t think you ever reclaimed it from him in the first place. From any of them - they all hold pieces of you, of your heart and soul, and we here in Narnia have never had all of you, however much we or you may have wished that we did.” 

And, well, that really is the problem, isn’t it?

  
  


<><><>

  
  


“Lucy told us that you were the one who suggested places we’d like on the tour,” Margo says, finding Quentin where he’s mending a broken stained glass window. 

“Did she?” he asks, not turning around as he turns his hands palm up, most of his concentration on the glass itself, its soft whisper telling him how it fits together, its happiness at being helped back to its old self. He likes working with glass more than almost anything else - yes, he’s aware of a certain morbid irony in the fact - because it responds to him with an eagerness unlike any other material. 

The bent metal frame he straightens with a different twist of his fingers almost seems to protest, and a part of Quentin goes,  _ oh hush, you know I love you too. _ Sometimes he actually does talk aloud to the things he’s mending - when he has to do bigger things, bit by bit, talking to it seems to help.

“You’re really good at that,” Margo says, and finished, Quentin shakes his hands free of the last tingle of magic like he might shake water from his skin. Then he turns to her. 

“It’s my discipline, and I get a lot of practice. What is it, Margo?”

“We want you to come back with us,” Margo says, and holds up a hand before Quentin can speak. “Not move back with us, you were right that maybe we were a little presumptuous about that. If nothing else, you’ve spent two years here, you have a job, and we knew those things because Edmund told us. Expecting you to just pull up stakes was a bit much. We just want you to visit.” 

More than a bit or a little, in Quentin’s opinion, but he decides not to be nitpicky about it when he’s got something more important to say. “Margo… I really don’t think that’s a good idea, though I appreciate you  _ asking  _ me instead of demanding it.”

“Why?” That isn’t Margo, and Quentin turns with a sigh to see Alice walking down the nearby stair to join them. “It’s just a visit. You can yell at Julia too, tie up all your loose ends. And we can tie up ours.” She’s trying to sound dismissive but her arms are folded in a way Quentin knows is more defensive than angry - not unlike how he himself would be hiding behind his hair if it wasn’t in its now-usual knot at the nape of his neck. 

That realization keeps him from snapping at her when he says, “I think a clean break is better.”

Margo rolls her eyes. “How I got elected out of all people to be the peacemaker here I don’t know,” she mutters, then says more loudly, “Q - Quentin, sorry. It’s not just about that. There’s things we need to discuss, but that we don’t think you’ll believe unless you can see for yourself. To do that, you have to come to New Fillory. Even Earth.” 

_ “The world of your birth, and the successor to the realm where you were made a king, are not yet done with you, Quentin Coldwater. But for now, you are to remain here. Your lessons are not yet learned.” _

That’s what Aslan told him, that day at the edge of the world. Quentin doesn’t know what lessons he’s learned since then, doesn’t know if this is what Aslan meant when he said Earth and New Fillory weren’t done with him, but he - 

Lucy talks of accepting the will of Aslan, trusting in his goodwill. Edmund says it’s less about that, and more about coming to see in your heart that he always tells you everything you need to know, whether you see it from the beginning or not. Quentin doesn’t exactly know what to do with either of those philosophies, and decides that all he really can do is what he would do anyway. 

So he says, “I just - you’re right, it’s been two years. My feeling that I don’t belong anymore isn’t just because of the things I saw in the Underworld. I can…” He runs a hand over the top of his head, fighting the urge to pace and worrying his lower lip between his teeth instead. “I can believe there’s stuff I don’t know - I’ve been thinking about that, and I can see it. But the thing is, you guys have your lives, and I have mine, and I - maybe this is how it’s supposed to be. You two and Eliot in New Fillory, Julia on Earth with her daughter and I’m sure still pursuing magic as much as she can, and me here in Narnia.”

Alice frowns. “Aren’t you the one who told Eliot that destiny was bullshit, back when we were all crowned? Since when do you believe things are preordained?” 

“You guys don’t need me, and I’m in one of the best places, mentally, that I’ve ever been,” Quentin says, even though it’s no longer entirely true. In some ways he’s not sure it’s ever been true, or if he’s just been living too quietly to really feel the more intense things. Some of both, probably. “I just - why rock the boat more?” 

“Because there’s things you need to know,” Margo says. “And things we need to say. And like I said, we can’t really say them here. Look, don’t say no now. Just think about it, all right? Anyway, maybe we want to return the favor - I got a real kick out of that lamppost.” 

“The winged horses and unicorns were beautiful,” Alice says quietly. 

Quentin, looking at them, can’t help but smile a little. But then he has to ask, “Why am I getting double-teamed here, and not triple?” 

Alice rolls her eyes and Margo laughs. “Eliot has his own persuasions in mind, that’s why. Really, though, Quentin. Just - think about it. We’re leaving soon but not just yet.” 

“I’ll think about it,” Quentin says, but he really does think it’s a bad idea, and a week later, when the New Fillorian delegation announces they will be leaving in three days’ time, Quentin tells Edmund when he asks that the answer is still no. They’re better off as they are. Penny made that very clear, that he did what he was supposed to. Quentin is meant to be here, the others are meant to be where they are, and their lives are on different paths. 

Prolonging all this is just going to make things hurt more for all concerned, and he can’t - he can’t go back. He can’t trust again, so he can’t go back. Easier to just accept that things are as they are, and that it’s as they should be. 

The next morning, he goes to the practice yards, feeling restless, only to find a surprise there. Eliot, examining the racks of practice swords. He turns to see Quentin there and smiles, that first-meeting distance still in his expression but something in his eyes that Quentin can’t name. The intensity of it, whatever it is, doesn’t match the aloof cast to his features, and that makes Quentin nervous. 

Still, he manages his best smile. “Didn’t expect to see you here.” 

Eliot shrugs, picking up a practice sword, testing the weight of it. “I hear you’re not half bad with a sword these days.” His voice is almost too mild, no hint of the obvious innuendo Quentin might have expected. It makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Eliot is most definitely up to something, but the question is what? 

“I’ve managed to get the hang of it. Word is you’re pretty good yourself.” 

“Oh, well, swashbuckling is fun. Why don’t we take a spin?” 

Quentin blinks. “You want to duel with me.” 

“Just practice swords, Quentin,” Eliot says, swinging his in a half circle sweep as if still testing it out. There’s something off there; maybe about his grip? Quentin isn’t sure, he can’t pinpoint it, and then Eliot adds, “This is the last time you and I will get to do something new together, will you really turn me down?” 

Oh, damn him, that isn’t fair.  _ You can’t look at me like you love me, it’s not fair, _ Quentin had said on the Dancing Lawn, and it had been true. It’s still true, but Eliot isn’t looking at him like that now. He looks… amused, but still that something in his eyes Quentin can’t read. He should shake his head and walk away. But he can’t, because Eliot’s right. This is the last new thing between them and Quentin apparently can’t deny it to either of them.

But because he is vexed about it, he says, “All right, why the fuck not?” It’s the pettiest thing he’s said to Eliot yet, although truthfully he doesn’t expect the barb to land. But it does, Eliot’s eyes going dark for a moment before settling back into that look Quentin can’t read. 

“Why not indeed,” he murmurs, bringing his practice blade up to guard position. Quentin does the same, as ever remembering Reepicheep’s advice called over the sound of waves and wind and creaking wood. “No magic.” 

“No magic,” Quentin agrees. What _is it_ about the way Eliot's holding his sword that doesn't seem right?

They circle, and Quentin is dimly aware that the others in the yard, including Edmund and Caspian, have stopped to watch, but that’s fine. He’s not amazing at this but he’s good, and he doesn’t mind being watched. He does mind being toyed with, as Eliot continues to circle. So he attacks, bringing his sword down in a diagonal chop that Eliot almost doesn’t block. But he gets his sword up in time, and then it’s on. 

He’s pretty good, actually, parrying Quentin’s blows and moving in with quick slashes of his own, but Quentin is - almost certain that he’s better, although Eliot’s footwork is superior. He has a better grip on his blade, for sure, Eliot almost loses his a few times. Does lose it once, and Quentin almost gets him then, nearly has the blade to Eliot’s neck, but Eliot is too fast for him, rolling and catching hold of his hilt just in time to block Quentin’s strike. 

There on his knees, their hilts locked, Eliot grins up at him, curls damp with sweat. For a moment Quentin’s mouth goes dry - it’s unfair that he’s still so fucking beautiful. “Let’s make a bet. You win, we leave you alone the last three days. I win, you come back with us for a visit.” 

Quentin steps back, halfway lowering his sword as he considers. Eliot gets carefully to his feet, but he too keeps his sword low. Alice and Margo have both been making little comments about how he really should come for a visit. Even Caspian and Edmund have made it clear that they don’t quite approve of his refusal. Lucy is more sympathetic, but he thinks she believes he ought to do it as well, if only for closure. 

Eliot must have something in mind, but Quentin has been steadily gaining on him so far. “Deal,” he says. 

That’s when he sees triumph flare up in Eliot’s face and he knows he fucked up as Eliot tosses his sword to his other hand. “Did you forget I’m left-handed, Quentin?” he says lightly, and attacks. 

It’s all Quentin can do to get his sword up in time, all he can do to block again and again as Eliot presses forward, unstoppable. Quentin is moved back, step by step, and his footwork has always been his weakest point -

He catches his left heel on his right toe as he ducks to avoid a sweeping cut from Eliot and goes down. He keeps hold of his blade as he falls, raising it up to block yet another strike. But then their hilts catch and Eliot twists his sword, sending Quentin’s flying. Before Quentin can roll away, dodge Eliot’s sword and grab his weapon, Eliot drops on top of him, straddling Quentin’s waist and holding his sword to his throat. “Yield, I think?” 

Quentin stares at him, not knowing if he’s terrified or furious. But everyone saw him agree, and Eliot won. “Yield,” he says quietly, and tries not to panic. 

He’s going to New Fillory. God - or Aslan - help him, he let Eliot play him like a fucking fiddle, and now he’s doomed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come talk to me at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or @Fae_Boleyn on Twitter.
> 
> Or, if you are RP-inclined, I have a Quentin RP sideblog at cardtricksandminormendings.tumblr.com :)
> 
> The Crystal Garden and Fledge's Cliffs are inventions of mine.


	4. till they're before your eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Quentin goes to New Fillory and has one more unhappy reunion to get through, but then he finally gets some answers. And then loses a fight with a plant, so to speak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Welcome back to this story, I hope it finds you well. :)
> 
> Warnings for this chapter include Quentin's unhappy, morbid mindset, which does include some speculation on if he was wrong to fight his way back to life. I think that's it, if I missed something let me know - oh, my beta yelled at me a lot reading this. Speaking of her, thanks to Maii as ever, and to Evelyn still for the prompt and El for the cheerleading.

Quentin is shoving clothes into a bag when there’s a knock at his door. “Come in!” he calls, not looking at the door until he hears Edmund clear his throat. “That was a miscalculation,” he says dryly. 

“Yes, I know,” Quentin says with a sigh.

“Can I ask how you forgot that a man you spent a lifetime with is left-handed?” Edmund asks. 

Quentin makes a face. “Honestly? I think I’m so used to fighting people who are also right-handed that it only half-registered that something was wrong? Reepicheep would not approve. I just — I wasn’t thinking, and here we are. And I’m going to fucking  _ New Fillory. _ ” He shoves a shirt into his bag, then stops, raking his hand through his hair. “The worst part? I  _ knew  _ he was planning something. Margo actually  _ told  _ me that he was planning his own method of persuasion. I didn’t expect him to con me into it but I probably should have, Eliot has always known just what will work with me. And I —” 

He stops, because his voice is breaking. It’s just — why couldn’t they just respect what he wanted? Because Quentin is not  _ stupid _ ; Margo at least definitely knew and probably approved of Eliot’s little scheme, and Alice, who the fuck knows? It’s his own stupid-ass fault he fell for it, of course, but he shouldn’t have been looking for a trick because there shouldn’t have  _ been  _ any! It would have been easy for them to just go home and leave him to his life like they once left him to the afterlife. He doesn’t understand why they even want him to go to New Fillory when he’s made it pretty clear he doesn’t want to reconcile with any of them. 

Except for the part of him that does, that always will. But he can’t. 

“Hey, are you all right?” Edmund sounds concerned now, laying a comforting hand on Quentin’s shoulder. Quentin stares at his open, half-full bag, and thinks that he hasn’t been all right since he sat on a dais in the Whitespire throne room and listened to his once-and-never husband tell him their life together wasn’t really them. He thought he was, here in Narnia, but that was only because he could pretend his past hadn’t happened. 

Even in Narnia, he will never be able to do that again. So maybe Caspian and Edmund were right all along. Maybe if he goes back, if he plays along with this game long enough to prove to his one-time friends that he is not one of them anymore, he will finally be free? Even if he still misses them, even if he’s glad to know Margo and Alice liked the sights he picked for them, even if he hopes they’re happy and he hopes Julia is happy. Even if he’s still in love with Eliot. 

He no longer belongs. He served his purpose with them.  _ They’ll not only survive, they’ll thrive, _ Penny had said, Because Quentin died when and how he did. They don’t need him; they had needed him only long enough to bring the group together and then to die usefully, and now they don’t.  _ You won, _ Jane had told Eliot, but then she’d saved Julia at the request of 23 and that girl whose name Quentin never caught who is somehow related to the Chatwins (he doesn’t know how exactly). Obviously, Jane knew that Quentin had served his purpose and returning him would do no one there any good. 

This is why Quentin prefers to be angry. Because when he stops being angry, he knows that this was the right thing, and it  _ hurts so much _ to know that the best he could do for the people he loved best was to die. That no one should have saved him because no one was supposed to. Maybe he was supposed to come back because Aslan did tell him that, maybe he was even meant to eventually to go back to Earth and to see New Fillory, but he isn’t supposed to return to  _ them _ . He knows that, he’s built a life understanding that simple fact, and he doesn’t get how they can’t or won’t see it.

(And yet, whenever his train of thought sticks on these things for too long, somewhere in the back of his mind he hears Aslan’s roar. Lucy would say that means something. Quentin just says he’s tired.)

“Do you remember the Mist?” he asks Edmund finally.

“I’ll never forget it,” Edmund says, a grim edge to his voice. “Why do you ask?” 

“Do you ever have the dreams again?” 

Edmund sighs, and sits on Quentin’s worktable. Quentin settles on his bed, folded up in one of his usual contortions. “The dreams are no longer magical in nature, if that’s what you mean,” Edmund says after a moment. “If you’re asking, do I still have nightmares based on the things I saw, and the true memories and the demons it drew on to form those things, then the answer is yes. As I assume it is for you too?”

“Yep,” Quentin says. “Only I dream of dying in all these ways I didn’t, and my friends either watch me or it’s one of them killing me. And it’s — not helpful. I’m aware that it’s my subconscious messing with me, I don’t seriously think they’d hurt me now that I’m back, even if they probably would have stopped me coming back if they’d —”   


Quentin stops abruptly, blinking. He’d never said that out loud before, barely ever let himself really think the thought. But there it is, out in the open. “Um.” 

“Do you think so?” Edmund asks, looking unsettled. “Really, do you think so?” 

“I did,” Quentin says after a long moment. “Whether I still do or not… I don’t know. I really don’t. Maybe that’s — maybe that’s what’s really bothering me, even more than that no one tried to save me.” Because in a way, he can sort of understand that. It wouldn’t have occurred to him that he could do more to save Alice after the White Lady failed, not until he saw her. Would Alice and Julia have tried to save Penny, if the Truth Key hadn’t revealed that he was still around? 

That doesn’t ease the sting of the time magic bullshit, but in Quentin’s calmer moments he can more or less see why resurrecting him outright wasn’t considered. That’s even without bringing up how trying to do exactly that created his evil twin self in Timeline 23. He still thinks Julia could have gotten around to a seance after risking apocalypse for her boyfriend, but that’s another issue and anyway, what would it have mattered if they weren’t willing to help or even let him escape on his own? 

Maybe that’s what he needs to know, before all is said and done. They’ll accept him back now if he agrees because his second life is a done deal, but if they’d known before he got out, would they have let him? He remembers Alice and Eliot — mostly Alice but they both said it at least once — talking about laying him to rest during that trek up the Mountain. He knows that Julia talked about the peace of his soul. If they’d known he was doing the exact opposite of resting in peace down in the Asphodel Fields, what would they have done?

“Quentin.” Edmund’s voice is sharp, his ‘King of the Golden Age’ voice, and Quentin guesses from him using it that this isn’t the first time Edmund’s tried to get his attention.

“Yeah?” he says, shaking his head to clear it.    
  


“We will step in if you really need it. We’ll say you’re needed here.” 

Part of Quentin wants to grab at the escape but — no. No. He needs to be  _ done  _ with this, one way or another, or he will never be free to live his life. Wherever he might be to live it. “I made a promise. I broke enough of those in my last life. I’ll go, and I’ll figure things out at last, one way or another.” 

“Just remember, you will always have a home in Narnia.” 

“Except didn’t Aslan say otherwise?” Quentin says with a wry twist to his mouth, not quite a smile but close. 

“Much of the time, Aslan leaves things to us, and I say, you can always come back if you wish it.” Edmund smiles, offering his hand. Quentin takes it, and finds he can breathe a little easier. 

He’s not alone, that much he can say for sure, even with everything else in his world all jumbled up. 

_ I’m trying to tell you, you are not alone here.  _

Well, one way or another, he supposes Eliot was right, and that’s kind of funny, isn’t it?

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Somehow, it fails to occur to Quentin until the morning of departure that he’s going to have to ride in a carriage with Eliot, Margo, and Alice. Fuck. 

He manages to duck into it while the three of them are still exchanging formal goodbyes with Caspian, Edmund, and Lucy, which gives him time to press himself into a corner of the carriage. It’s spacious inside, more than it looks — magic, obviously — but Quentin takes up as little space as he can, resolutely staring out of the window he’s tucked up near. 

“Seriously? You’re going to squish yourself into a corner and stare out the window for the whole trip?” Margo says scornfully as she steps inside, Alice sitting next to her and Eliot sitting on the same seat as Quentin but keeping his distance. 

“I’m here because I’m keeping my word,” Quentin says evenly, staring out at the view of the cliffs and the sea, trying to picture what it was like when Edmund and Lucy, with their older siblings, returned to the land they’d once ruled to find it changed and themselves children again. He tries to imagine Trumpkin, grumpy but formal most of the time, as half-drowned after a narrow escape from summary execution. He can’t, really. “I’m not here because I have any actual interest in being here.” 

“God, you’re such a dick,” Alice snaps. “One visit, and then you never have to see any of us again. It wouldn’t kill you to be nice to people who missed you.”

Quentin sighs, because they’re right, aren’t they. He’s being a brat. “Fine,” he says, turning to face them. “I don’t know what to say, all right?” 

“You could tell us what life is like for you,” Eliot says, and he sounds almost nervous. It makes Quentin’s heart twist, and part of him wants to reach out, but he knows better. “Are you happy? The Narnians seem to like you.”

Quentin swallows hard. “I’m content. And that’s all I expect,” he says, voice clipped.  _ I gave up on happiness a long time ago, _ he thinks but doesn’t say. Eliot looks uncomfortable, Margo is scowling, and Alice’s mouth is set in a thin line. Inwardly, Quentin sighs. He doesn’t want to do this. But — but maybe —. 

This visit will be the last time he sees any of them, right? He should want them to think of him kindly. Just because his memories of their past are forever stained, he shouldn’t be trying to make them hate him and ruin it all for them too, should he? He’s already done enough to cause that, but… but… 

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to be bitchy, it’s just the truth. But anyway... I’m the court magician, you know that. There’s actually not a lot of fancy magic that needs to be done, but being a mender is damned useful. I’ve seen half the country, because I was sent off on trips to fix things.” 

“Sounds exhausting,” Margo says, coolly. 

“No, not really. It keeps me busy, keeps me useful.”

“Is that what matters to you?” Alice asks, and Quentin has to look away again, from the strangely upset look on Eliot’s face, from the glances Alice and Margo give each other. Of  _ course  _ it’s what matters to him, it’s the only reason anyone keeps him around. It’s true that Caspian, Lucy, and Edmund are genuinely fond of him, but they are very active royals. Everyone in Cair Paravel, except those who are sick or injured and need to heal, does something. Even the kids are in one kind of training or another. 

Quentin doesn’t have to be doing something constructive every minute of every day, no, but he does have to pull his weight one way or another. 

“I…” he starts to say, then shakes his head. “I like it. It makes me feel more secure. Um, anyway, that’s really enough about me, isn’t it? You’ve seen Narnia, there’s not much else I can tell you. What, um. What’s New Fillory like?” 

Why are they looking at him like they’re sad? It makes his skin crawl, it makes him need to escape, but he’s literally in a carriage, there’s nowhere to go. So he breathes through it till it eases off, and Margo recovers first because of course she does — he used to both love and envy that about her — to start telling him stories of the things New Fillory pulled from their minds to shape itself with. 

From what he can tell, on the whole New Fillory is basically… Fillory but kind of modernized, fantastical or steampunk-ish innovations woven in to create more or less the equivalent of modern conveniences. Quentin thinks of two cabinets spelled to different levels of cold to approximate a refrigerator and a freezer, in a Fillory of the past, and bites the tip of his tongue until he tastes blood.

“There’s a field of bacon too — my thing,” Alice says, almost sheepish, and Quentin remembers sitting on the floor with Alice, eating a plate of bacon and the trembling exhausted hope that hadn’t lasted because hope never lasts. Not for him. But he manages a faint smile for her.

Eliot, for some reason, doesn’t say anything at all. 

  
  
  


<><><>

  
  


The palace has a faintly Disney look to it, Quentin thinks as the carriage approaches, but he keeps this thought to himself. The world spell was originally his, after all, a spell he’d thought might make an interesting thesis project one day back during the months he’d actually just been a fucking student. So he knows that the magic draws on memory. It’s wild magic, to build a world, and wild magic can only be controlled so far. It would have wanted to have a form, and sought guidance in the minds of everyone who cast the spell. 

They’re millennials. Of course Disney popped up somewhere. They’re probably lucky Wavespire Castle doesn’t look like Hogwarts. 

And that’s another change, of course. Wavespire, not Whitespire, a palace by the sea not unlike Cair Paravel. “That’s unexpected,” Quentin says in spite of himself. It’s also a little unnerving, because he remembers a tipsy rant he’d gone on one night with Eliot and Margo about how really, Whitespire would have been better off with sea access, either a harbor or a river, because historically cities did that if the country itself wasn’t landlocked. 

He’s sure it’s coincidence, that Alice’s logical mind noticed the same thing or… or something. This is  _ not  _ because of something he said. It’s not. Because if it was that would mean things Quentin knows aren’t true, right? He isn’t important enough for that night to still matter, even unconsciously.

At the palace gates, Eliot has a quiet word with one of the servants who trotted out to greet them, and the guy in question comes over to Quentin. “Prince Quentin, King Eliot asked me to show you to your chambers.” 

Quentin considers correcting the title, but that seems like the kind of thing more likely to make an innocent third party uncomfortable than prove his point to his former friends, so he just nods. “Thank you,” he says. “What’s your name?” 

“Androw, Your Highness.” 

“Lead the way then, Androw.” The idea of a room sounds like a great one just now — it’ll give Quentin some time to himself, to collect his thoughts. He can do this. He’s the court magician of Cair Paravel, whatever other titles aren’t really his. He is representing his kings and queen and their court, however unofficially. He can do this. He has to. 

His resolve is sorely tested when Androw opens the door to his bedroom, though. It’s a bright and airy space, with big windows overlooking the sea — but thick dark curtains if necessary — and what looks like a really comfortable bed. It isn’t these things which make Quentin stumble, because they could belong to any bedroom set aside for guests. 

There’s a wall that’s entirely books and the wall perpendicular to it is half full with empty space left on its shelves. When he approaches the collection, a significant number of them are Earth books. Books he loved. And, and some of them — 

“These are mine,” he says in a shaking tiny voice, staring at the worn spines. He thought all his things were gone, donated or thrown out or repurposed. In a particularly morbid moment he’d wondered if someone stuck them in a cheap coffin to give it weight to explain what they were burying in the cemetery next to his father’s grave.

“Yes, Your Highness,” Androw says from behind him, sounding very careful. “King Eliot made certain of it some time ago. He wished you to feel at home immediately, knowing how strange it would be for you at first.” 

“Oh,” Quentin says, because he can’t say anything else. Feeling dazed, he stumbles back from the bookshelf walls, sitting on the foot of the bed. “Um — I think I need some privacy, Thank you for guiding me here.” 

He thinks Androw might bow but he doesn’t really notice, staring down at his feet in their soft Narnian boots. He makes himself get up and cross to a mirror, staring at himself. His braided-back white hair, his dark blue and black Narnian clothing, in a room that looks Fillorian — New Fillorian, whatever — with books from Earth that apparently  _ Eliot  _ made sure would be here. He knows they expected him to come back with him but he — he’d never expected anyone to prepare for it. He’d thought he was just expected to trot along at their heels and make it work because they wanted it to. 

He doesn’t know how to feel about this.

Quentin turns away from his reflection —  _ don’t think about a mirror as much magic as glass coming together under his power and setting off an explosion in gold, beautiful and fatal _ — and opens his bag, digging deep until he finds a letter he’s carried from the Underworld to the world of Narnia and now to here. 

_ To Quentin Coldwater, before he went to the Seam. _

Quentin considers opening it, but in the end, he just sets it on one of the empty bookshelves, weighing it down with a rock he was once given at the village of Beruna by a little boy who swore it was lucky. 

He still doesn’t feel ready to look at it. Not yet. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Quentin isn’t sure what to expect when Julia comes through the doorway that apparently leads to Earth. He doesn’t know what the others told her about him, about his unwillingness to play happy reunion with anyone. He doesn’t even know — she planned a seance but then she was the one who scolded Alice for the golem, from what he saw she was the first one to let him go and use his death to mean something. 

For all he knows, she’s decided by now that his death was worth getting her magic back. Maybe she’s afraid that she’ll lose it now, though Quentin’s reasonably sure it doesn’t work like that. 

He is not expecting her to come through the door and practically tackle him in a hug. 

Quentin freezes, arms at his sides, entire body held rigid. He doesn’t know what to do. He’s used to Alice, Margo, and Eliot more or less respecting his need for physical distance, even when they tell him off for his attitude. And he isn’t really hugged much anymore. So he just stands there until Julia steps back, arms falling to her sides as she stares at him. 

“Kady said you weren’t happy to see us, but I didn’t really believe her. You really aren’t glad to see us. We missed you so much, and you don’t seem to care,” she says, blinking rapidly. “Q…” 

“Quentin,” Quentin corrects quietly. “No one calls me Q anymore.” 

“Well, I do!” Julia says, hands clenching into fists. “I’m the first one who ever did. You’re still my Q, even if you don’t want to be. Alice said you blamed us for not saving you.” 

“Alice likes to misrepresent why I’m angry,” Quentin says flatly. “So does Margo, come to think of it.” 

“Quentin, we couldn’t just tear open the Underworld for you. That’s what Rupert was doing, he destroyed Fillory to do it and he didn’t even get the person he wanted!” Julia snaps, and she’s looking at him like he’s a fool. “You gave your life to save us, to save the world, it would have been pretty poor repayment to tear shit apart again on a weak chance we could save you.” 

“Yeah, but saving 23 and causing an apocalypse was just fine,” Quentin says. “Him going to see Jane Chatwin to use time magic to save you, Eliot and Margo using time magic to save Josh and Fen, all of that was fine and fucking dandy, but not one of you had a real conversation about me!” 

“I wanted to contact your soul!” 

“Why didn’t you?” 

“Because things kept happening, and the little boy you, he — I was so sure, he seemed so happy, I was sure it was a reflection of how your soul must be at peace, and I didn’t want to disturb you further!” 

“I wasn’t at peace, I was wandering the Asphodel Meadows trying to get home! I got tortured for it!” Quentin yells, and then claps a hand over his mouth. Fuck, fuck, he had not meant to say that, they don’t get to know about that. Julia goes white, staring at him. 

“What? Quentin, no, that’s not possible. You died a hero, you should have gone right to Elysium. You should have been in a good place where you could see your dad again, where’d you’d greet us all someday —” 

“What, did you think I was going to hug you and welcome you to the afterlife like a good little doorman? I never intended to see any of you if I failed to escape and crossed the rest of the way over,” Quentin hisses. “I intended to spend my afterlife making sure I never saw any of you again, once I started seeing how fucking easily I could just be let go of when no one else was impossible to at least try for.” 

“That isn’t fair,” Julia says. 

“I don’t care,” Quentin says. “I was in the Asphodel Meadows. They are the second level of the Underworld. I don’t know where Elysium is, or Tartarus, or how many other levels there are. The Meadows are an afterlife equivalent of the Neitherlands or the Wood Between the Worlds, an in-between place where you can go any number of places from. Including back to the living world, if you can find a way. I tried to find a way, I got caught, and the goddess in charge down there tortured me for it.” 

“Because you weren’t supposed to leave. You could have moved on to rest from there,” Julia says. “Couldn’t you? You weren’t being tortured all the time, right?” 

“Does that make it better? That it was punishment?” Quentin asks.

“No, Q, of course not, I just meant, I wanted to make sure we didn’t accidentally leave you in Tartarus or something. But we didn’t, it was just a one-time —”

“Would you prefer that I’d moved on then, Julia? Would you prefer me to be dead so that you can keep your illusion that I’m happily at peace waiting for you, that I died a hero instead of a suicide? I don’t know why I thought you’d care I suffered, you sure as fuck didn’t blink when the Monster spent months tormenting me.” 

“Now that is a lie and you’re twisting my words,” Julia hisses. “I told you it was too big a risk, that we needed to banish —” 

“You never asked if I was all right! It dragged me off to dispose of a body, I came back half-catatonic with my shirt partway undone and you barely looked at me!” Quentin screams. “You  _ never _ , not  _ once _ , asked if I was all right!” 

“I did when your dad —” 

“I’m not talking about when I found out my dad was dead! I’m talking about the fact that you knew the Monster was walking around in the body of one of the people who meant the most to me in the whole fucking world, and you didn’t think you should ask how I was doing? That maybe I didn’t need to be reminded of the risks, I didn’t need you to tell me that  _ you still needed me, _ I just needed someone to care about how much it hurt, for one fucking minute? You watched me spiral and then I killed myself, but you got your magic back so that just meant you had to make your magic worth my death, right?” 

Oh fuck, he’s crying. He can feel the tears on his cheeks, and he’s not the only one. Julia’s mouth is pressed in a thin line, she looks furious but she’s crying just as much as he is. 

“That isn’t what it was like. That’s not what I — I wasn’t ignoring you. I knew nothing I could say would help so I just tried to be there. I told you I still needed you because I thought it would give you something to hold onto, Quentin. You’re making it sound like I abandoned you. I didn’t.” 

“‘Your true friends will never abandon you.’ That’s what you told the golem,” Quentin says.

“Because it was true!” 

“That’s funny. I felt pretty fucking abandoned by the time I died.” 

“I did the best I could!” Julia yells. “Just because I didn’t know what to do and I guessed wrong, that does not make me a bad guy! Just because I’m capable of moving on and I wasn’t willing to tear the world apart for you, does not mean I didn’t love you, that I didn’t grieve for you, that until this moment I was happy you were back!” 

“And what, now you wish I’d stayed dead?” 

“No, you bastard! But I do think maybe you should go back to Narnia and never see any of us again.” 

“Luckily for you, that’s exactly what I plan to do as soon as Their Majesties let me go,” Quentin says.

“Fine! Good fucking riddance!” Julia says. “I have actual friends in this castle to see.” And she storms past him and out of the room, presumably in search of Kady, or maybe Alice or even Eliot. As far as Quentin knows, Julia and Margo aren’t really friends, though he never bothered to ask either. 

He wants to go home. But the problem is, he isn’t thinking of Cair Paravel when he thinks of home. It’s still, it’s always, the damned Mosaic that is the only real home his heart acknowledges, and he can’t go back to that. There’s nothing left of that.

Maybe he  _ should  _ have stayed dead. For all his stubbornness in getting back, sometimes he thinks he should have just kept going until he finally reached somewhere peaceful to rest. It certainly wouldn’t hurt as much as life determinedly keeps finding ways to do.

_ “No, young one. That is not your fate.”  _

The words in his head are accompanied by a roar that seems to echo in Quentin’s very bones, and he doesn’t understand it because he’s not a royal of Narnia, Aslan spoke to him once but he’s not really one of the chosen, is he?

But his entire body is still tingling from the sense of that roar, and suddenly he remembers the smell of the flowers at the end of the world. Maybe Elysium or wherever — Aslan’s Country, they call it in Narnia — would be easier. But it isn’t going anywhere, and he can’t have the smell of flowers supernatural or normal, he can’t have all the different ways objects can feel to his magic, he can’t have all the good things without the hard things. 

Would it hurt less to be here if he tried to just… welcome the good in it? Wavespire is a beautiful castle, this whole world is inadvertently partly his doing, right? Maybe he should just… look around for a while, should try to find things to enjoy. Maybe if he does, he’ll find interacting with the others easier? 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Quentin does try, after that, to approach this visit to New Fillory as an adventure. It even works, to a degree — he’s able to spend an afternoon in the Wavespire library with Alice in perfectly friendly talk about the journals she’s filling with information about Narnia to go in the official record. He’s able to take a tour with Margo, which for some reason misses part of the palace but still, it’s nice and they have a good conversation about it. 

He doesn’t run into Eliot or Julia. And every night he dreams about one or more of his former friends leaving him to die, or striking the killing blow themselves. 

One afternoon, all of them have a private lunch in Margo’s sitting room, so Quentin has to play social again. Kady is there too, and it’s the first Quentin’s seen of her. She looks him over, in Narnian trousers and high-necked shirt, and Quentin is a little amused by her own interesting mix of a Fillorian shirt and Earth jeans. 

“You look good, Coldwater. Second life agrees with you.” 

There’s something, the faintest flicker of almost-bitterness, and Quentin guesses she must be wondering why Penny couldn’t have come back too, even now that Kady’s in love with Alice it must hurt on some level. Quentin can’t even blame her, because she would have seen the same progression of Eliot and Margo saving Fen and Josh, then Julia saving 23 at the brink of death, 23 saving that creepy ghost guy and then Julia. 

The only time the group failed to save one of their own that they actually  _ tried  _ to save, it was Penny. Quentin might resent the fuck out of Penny’s misleading promises, but he can’t blame Kady for that unhappy shadow. Isn’t it kind of an echo of his own pain? 

“World-hopping suits you,” he says instead, because Alice mentioned Kady splits her time between New Fillory and Earth. And it does seem to suit her, to fill her with a purpose Quentin frankly envies. But pleasantries over, neither of them have much to say to each other; they never did, after all.

“I was a little harsh the other day,” Julia says, partway through the meal and looking at Quentin a little too steadily, like she’s fighting not to look away. 

“What part?” Quentin asks, fiddling with his fork. 

“The part where I said you should go back to Narnia and not come back. I mean — if you really want to do that, but… But it would be better if you could visit, at least? They’d let you have time off for that, right?” 

“Do you really think that’s a good idea?” Quentin asks. 

“Look, I was mad that you wouldn’t even hug me. It hurt. We’re all kind of pissed that you’re this hostile, but Quentin, you’re the only one making it hard to rebuild what we had. All of us want to, we’re all willing to make an effort,” Julia says. “I’ve been talking to everyone else and we’re agreed, we’re all doing our best, but you’re so angry —” 

“I didn’t say that, I stayed the fuck out of it,” Eliot murmurs. 

“Yeah, because you don’t want to push,” Margo says. “But I think Julia’s right to say it. The only problem here, Quentin —” 

Strangely, Quentin doesn’t want to yell. He just wants to know one thing, as he gets to his feet. He feels terribly, horribly calm. Because he’s narrowed down most of the other situations, see. Except for Julia, all of them somehow involved knowing the dead person was still around. Even Fen and Josh, Quentin only saw glimpses but something weird was happening. Some… level of connection.

He can admit he didn’t provide them that. He wasn’t a Niffin, or an astral ghost, or an imprint or whatever the fuck. He was just trapped on the Underworld’s second level, with no way to reach out unless he could find the right kind of necromancer or someone obliged him with a seance. And tracking a necromancer would have taken time he needed to escape. 

Even if time had been strangely long down there, so that sometimes Quentin feels even older than fifty years of memories give him reason to feel.

“What would you have done, if you knew I was trying to bring myself back?” he cuts Margo off, and his voice is blank. 

“What?” Margo asks. 

“If you had known I was trying to save myself, even though I was already dead. If you knew I was trying to undo my own suicide.” He uses the word again because it makes them squirm. They still want to believe it was a sacrifice. “You did your best to stop Rupert Chatwin. Would you have helped me? Or would you have told me to accept my fate and move on? Would you have banished me back like the liches and the zombies and revenants —” 

“You’re not any of those things, don’t be dramatic, Quentin,” Alice says sharply. 

“Answer the question, then. Would you have helped me if you knew?” Quentin asks, and his voice isn’t flat anymore, it’s a thin broken thing, filled with all the pain he’s been trying to hide. “If you knew I’d been tortured for trying to save myself and I kept trying anyway, if you knew that the little well stunt meant to  _ lay me to rest _ just gave me more pain,  _ would you have helped me?!”  _

His voice doesn’t even sound like his anymore, choked and anguished, and they all just look stunned. 

There’s dead silence in the room, and Quentin — 

Silence implies consent, right? Or something like that? Unless you fight something, you accept it? Or if you don’t speak it’s because you don’t want to say the truth? Which means… which has to mean they wouldn’t have, right? That his nightmares are nearly true and they would have stopped him escaping? 

“I have to go. I have to go.” 

And he runs for the door, even as they call for him. Oh God. Oh God.

He hadn’t really thought it was true, only feared it. And now… Now…

What did he do so wrong that he just  _ wasn’t worth it? _

  
  


<><><>

  
  


The sea is a strange color here. The beach is golden sand, almost ideally perfect, but the ocean… It’s iridescent, Quentin thinks. Blue one moment, then green another, then a shimmery grey or purple. It’s beautiful and more unreal than anything he remembers seeing in the original Fillory, more than almost anything in Narnia. The Crystal Gardens are probably in the same category as the ocean beside Wavespire — it must have a name, but Quentin hasn’t asked. 

He sits on the sand and thinks of a cliff by a different sea. Thinks of a mountain under sky as vividly blue — he wonders if Eliot and Alice noticed there was a similarity to the two places, or if maybe it only looked that way in the dark pools he watched from. He tips his head up and the sky of New Fillory is almost lavender, actually. Narnia’s sky is a blue with a green wash to it, like even the sky itself is more alive than anywhere else Quentin ever saw. 

(At the edge of the world, the sky is more green than blue, the pale green of new growth in spring.)

Fillory’s sky, he remembers, had an odd look to it, like it shimmered faintly, like blue opal or something. Maybe it was the opium. The sky here is clearer, more like the blue skies on Earth except for the lavender tint. As if there’s always a hint of sunset, except the sunsets here turn the sky almost crimson and gold. Lavender is a color of Earth sunset, and of New Fillory midday.

The first day Quentin was here, he watched the vivid red in the sky and thought of the vial of his blood they used in the world spell. He looks at the sky now and remembers coloring the illustrations in his oldest copies of the Fillory books — including the one Julia gave Alice. 

He remembers that he used sky blue and the lightest purple of his colored pencils both on the skies, and then he tries not to think about that at all. 

Golden sand and iridescent sea. “I wonder who came up with this,” he says out loud, not expecting an answer. 

“Me, I think,” comes a voice from behind him. Quentin turns to find Kady, who is the last person he would have expected to follow him. Not knowing what to say, he keeps silent and she shrugs. “Looks like a print that was up on the wall, in one of the places I lived longest. I used to fall asleep picturing myself there, and when we did New Fillory, suddenly this is what the ocean and the beaches looked like.” 

“World creation is wild magic; it pulls from your mind,” Quentin says with a shrug. He’s sure that if he went traveling he’d find all kinds of things drawn from Margo’s mind or Eliot’s, from Alice’s or Kady’s, from Josh’s and even Fen’s. They were all part of the spell — even if Fen isn’t a magician — so there’s something of all of them here. 

(He’s not sure where Josh and Fen are. He doesn’t actually care enough to ask.)

(If the sky and the castle being by the sea are ideas that might have something to do with him, he’s still not the one who brought them here.)

The palace itself is Margo, mostly. Bright and beautiful and sharp, and only in certain corners are all three of those different. Alice is the high clear windows and those corners are Eliot, places every bit as bright and beautiful, but the sharpness is less a feature and more a protection, there. Quentin can’t explain how he knows this but he does. The neat layout of the surrounding village is Alice, and from what little he saw the palace grounds are Eliot too but for some reason no one wants to let him out of the neat little gardens and courtyards that speak of no one at all, no one wants him to go beyond the wall to the orchards and he doesn’t know why.

“I guess you’d know what that spell was,” Kady says, cutting into his thoughts. “Why did you have it, anyway?” 

Funny. No one’s thought to ask him that. “Thought it might make a good thesis. What do you want, Kady?” He assumes she’s here to make him apologize, for Alice and/or Julia’s sake. 

“Those idiots upstairs brought you here to tell you things they didn’t think you’d believe, and now they still won’t tell you.”

Quentin remembers being told something like that, and raises his eyebrows. “Do you know why they still won’t tell me?” 

“Well, apparently you ask questions and run away before you get answers, so maybe they don’t think you’ll let them tell you?” 

Quentin scowls. “I think that silence was answer enough.” 

“And I think it was because they were fucking shell-shocked by that question, but that’s not the point. Actually, I know why they won’t tell you. They think they can wait out your temper and you’ll appreciate it more once you calm down. Why they think that when it’s blatantly obvious to me that your anger isn’t going to cool down on its own and I never really knew you that well, that I can’t explain. But this is getting ridiculous, so come on.” 

Quentin considers refusing, but in the end, isn’t this why he’s here? To tie up the loose ends, one way or another? So he brushes sand off his pants and he follows Kady back up to the palace, glimpsing orchards he’s not supposed to see. Except that’s more or less the direction they go, once they get inside. Through Margo’s bright colored marble hallways that glow with the sunlight pouring through Alice’s windows, and along the way Quentin spots little nooks, window seats or perches every bit as lovely as the rest, but a place to settle and watch, safe. 

Eliot always liked that window seat in the Cottage.

Nothing in the palace is Kady, as far as Quentin can tell, but then — like she said, they never knew each other that well. And anyway, she has the beach and the sea, maybe she didn’t  _ need  _ any part of the palace.

(Who made the sky? Why did they make it like that? Why is the palace by the sea?)

Kady opens the door to a room full of paintings, and Quentin recognizes it from Kirel’s description. He doesn’t fully recognize everything pictured here — he can more or less guess at things that seem to relate to the Dark King, or the things Eliot and Margo did in Fillory while he was on Earth with Niffin Alice or shadeless Julia, or during the Key Quest when staying away was also to preserve his autonomy while fairies played puppeteer.

But there’s one painting that he walks to without thinking. A cliff by the sea, it’s Quentin crowning Eliot while Alice, Margo, and Penny watch, and it’s — 

“The three of them sat with the painter for hours making sure he got you and Penny both right,” Kady says from behind him, her voice a little louder to be heard over the fall of water. Because that’s something Kirel didn’t mention. The small fountain in the center of the room, and the multicolored tiles surrounding it which — 

It takes Quentin a moment, after he makes himself turn away from the painting of the coronation, to realize the designs are his favorites from the Mosaic. From fifty years of combinations, those are the ones he liked best, but… but why… 

The fountain is silver, except for the blackened crown at the base of where the water flows. A crown he almost never wore, and the fountain itself, along the edges… The four suits of cards are carved along the rim. “I don’t understand,” he says, fingers trembling where they trace the symbols. He’d thought they used him as a pretty tragedy but this is — this is — 

He wondered if he had a gravestone. Apparently he has a fountain in the middle of a palace. And he can’t breathe. You don’t do this for someone you don’t miss. But why, why the effort to memorialize him and none to see if they still might save him? He doesn’t understand, this  _ makes no sense _ — 

“Come on,” Kady says, and it’s deja vu because her voice is strangely gentle as she takes his arm and leads him away. He thinks of her Penny’s unnerving gentleness and his hand leading Quentin away from his own funeral. 

_ Time to go.  _

_ All the bullshit falls away. You’ll see.  _

_ You didn’t really want to leave all that, did you? _

Except where Penny’s kindness had seemed strange, unsettling, Kady’s is unfamiliar but seems  _ real _ . Seems as well-meant as a music spell cast with good intentions but weirdly jarring song choice. 

It’s easier to accept that misfiring gesture as a comfort because it’s more than he’d thought Kady would give him. It feels like the only thing that was more than he might have hoped to get, in the aftermath of his death. 

Except — 

Kady is leading him outside, to a — it’s a door. In a tree trunk. Quentin has to laugh, a wild hysterical sort of sound. Kady frowns at him and he says, “Sorry, I just —what is that?” 

“What you really need to see,” Kady says, and opens the door. Quentin follows her inside, bewildered, and comes face to face with walls covered in handwriting. Eliot’s handwriting, mostly, though he recognises some as Alice’s or Julia’s or Margo’s, and bits he doesn’t recognize at all. 

They say things like  _ Isiac rites? _ and  _ Orpheus option is a bust, _ and  _ who is the new Queen of the Underworld? _ and  _ maybe the Celtic death deities are a better option. _ Notes on death gods and necromantic rituals and, and — and there are books here that are the same, a few of them even look Narnian. Books on necromancy, on... on resurrection. 

And on a table, an eclectic collection of Quentin’s things. A few articles of clothing, some books, some childhood toys. What looks, inexplicably, like a book report from tenth grade and an enchanted broom from Practical Applications. And one of his sketchbooks. 

“I don’t understand. I kept saying, why didn’t they try for me. I kept asking. But this is — what is this?” His voice doesn’t sound like his. It sounds shrill, trembly. Quentin doesn’t feel like himself. He remembers suddenly an odd thing Eliot said on the Cair Paravel beaches one day.  _ You can say all you want that we didn’t do enough for you, that we were too late to help you… _

“Why the fuck didn’t they just tell me? And why didn’t I know?”

“We had to secure things here first,” Kady says, and Quentin turns to her. She’s watching him carefully, her voice still kinder than he can ever remember her using with him but she is not her first love, however much she might still miss him. She is not Penny, and her kindness is strange but genuine, it isn’t a lie or something worse than a lie, some unnatural change like chittering ghosts. 

(Because deep down Quentin knows that the kind Penny of the Underworld is as lost to who he was as those incoherent wraiths in the Asphodel Meadows are to who they were. He just doesn’t know how or why or whether it matters.)

“What?” he says, because he still doesn’t get it. 

“We had to secure things here, and on Earth. The zombies and shit, and finally fixing the circumstances so that magic could go back to normal. It’s a long damn story, Quentin, and someone will tell you eventually, but the point is, there was shit we needed to do, so we did it. Then, six months later, Eliot sets up shop in here, and all of us have tried to help him at least occasionally. We were trying to get you back. He was trying most of all. But nothing worked. Can you tell me why, Q?” 

Kady has never called him Q and maybe that’s why he doesn’t mind her using it. Or maybe it’s the revelation of what he didn’t know. Of what, nonsensically, no one told him because of his anger, even though telling him this would have fixed more than a little of that! He wouldn’t have believed them in Narnia, it’s true, but he’s been here for days, they should have just  _ showed him _ if they wanted him to stop being angry!

“It didn’t work because by then I… By then I’d already saved myself. I’d escaped on my own and I was in Narnia. The problem wasn’t no one trying to save me, it was — it was that I never knew they tried because we have the most twisted luck in the world on our fucking timing.” 

It’s always **_time_ ** . Time magic, bad timing, memories of a whole other life, the difference between Earth and Fillory and maybe Narnia too. 

Quentin can’t — he can’t breathe. He takes a step back from the table full of his things, then another, then. Then he turns and runs from the room, Kady calling his name behind him. Oh God, oh fuck, he had it all wrong, the Mist had it wrong,  _ why didn’t anyone say anything — _

He runs, heedless. He trips on his own feet and his hand plunges into a thornbush. He barely notices, just keeps scrambling, not sure what he’s looking for, not sure why he’s running except that he can’t stop. 

He’s on his knees and he thinks he tripped again except he looks down at his hand where a thorn has gone right through his palm and out the back of his hand. That… that should hurt, that thorn is long as fuck, it looks kind of like a fairy-tale spindle… 

Oh shit. Spindle bushes, Margo said. She’s not sure where they come from but they cause… cause a fever, and not everyone… 

That would be a terrible way to die again, Quentin thinks as he topples over onto his side. 

The last thing he notices are familiar white and pink flowers, familiar green leaves against the lavender sky. Familiar flowers, and the familiar scents of  _ peaches and plums, _ and then his blood turns to fire in his veins and Quentin slips under into the dark. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quentin is NOT going to die again. I promise. He is, however, going to be a mess for a little while. Which means he'll need someone to take care of him... ;)
> 
> Come talk to me at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or @Fae_Boleyn on Twitter! Or, if you are RP-inclined, I have a Quentin RP sideblog at cardtricksandminormendings.tumblr.com :)


	5. which then turned into a hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which fever helps lead Quentin toward certain realizations and many conversations are had. Quentin finally reads a certain letter, and feelings are made clear.
> 
> The endgame here was always hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I hope this finds you well!
> 
> We've come to the end of this story! Thank you for reading along! Special thanks as ever to Maii for beta work, to Ev for prompting it in the first place, and my other enablers over on Discord. ;)
> 
> Warnings for this chapter include discussion of Quentin's suicide in 4.13, dream-memories of Underworld torture, and nightmares in which Quentin's friends are the ones killing him. But I promise, after the first few scenes things are not as bleak as this all sounds!

Quentin loses himself, for a while. 

He has flashes: someone yelling even as big gentle hands he almost recognizes pick him up, soft sheets with a familiar smell that makes him start to cry until those big hands come back, stroking his hair. More voices, something cool being poured down his throat. 

And through it all the burning, inside him this time but it’s the same — 

“Sparks again. Why. Burning again, don’t wanna go back to the Meadows yet,” he mumbles, trying to open his eyes, trying to see where he is, trying to find a way out. But his eyelids are so heavy, everything is burning.

“Shh, Q, hush, I’m not going to let that happen, all right? I'm not letting you die on me again, I'm not losing you twice.” 

He knows that voice — he knows — but he can’t —

He’s  _ burning _ .

  
  


<><><>

  
  


_ “You are dead, Quentin Coldwater. This would all be so much easier if you would just eat. The pain would stop, and you would stop your fruitless search.”  _

_ It’s a pomegranate. A pomegranate, cut open, set next to his face where Quentin lies sprawled on the ground, his back flayed open by the claws of the Furies. The fruit smells so good, like the best thing he’s ever smelled, but — _

_ Wait. He doesn’t even like pomegranates. He doesn’t want to eat it, he doesn’t want to give up.  _

_ He shakes his head, closes his eyes as Lady Melinoe reaches down to put her hand on the top of his head. She just rests it there, her long hair stinging where it brushes over his wounded back, and then —  _

_ Pain that sets his nerves on fire, nonsensical pain in a world where he usually feels nothing. Quentin screams and screams and never goes hoarse because he’s a ghost, he begs for mercy but never, ever promises to give up. He can’t, he can’t.  _

_ “They don’t want you,” she croons, stroking his hair, and it’s just petting this time.  _

_ “I know they don’t want me, but I have to try anyway,” he whispers, not even bothering to open his eyes. _

“But that isn’t true, Q. We do want you. Whoever was hurting you lied, I swear they lied.” 

Quentin turns in the soft sheets, and for a moment he can see a canopy, embroidered in colors his hazy eyes can’t pick a design from. There’s a cool hand on his chin, tilting his head up and —

Is that water? “Not… not the Lethe?” he mumbles. “Won’t make me forget?” 

“Just water, Q, come on, you have to drink something.” 

He tries, he really does. He’s not sure if he manages though and then he’s —

_ “El, Vix, please,” he begs, and he uses both their nicknames in hopes it’ll soften their cold eyes, but it doesn’t, oh God he thinks he made it worse because they both shove him backwards and — _

_ Quentin falls over the edge into the void, screaming forever and no one cares, he can hear them talking about how they did the right thing, the brave thing, by making sure he was gone for good.  _

_ “No, no, I’ll be good just help me please.” _

“Hey, hey, you don’t have to be good, you just have to be you, what the hell did we do? That’s not — that’s not what any of us meant, hey, you need to calm down, you’re sick.” 

“That’s one hell of a nightmare.” 

“Yes, I know, Bambi —” 

_ — And now it’s Margo and Julia and they’re, they’re lighting — it’s the bonfire but it’s a real pyre this time, they’re lighting him on fire and it burns, it burns —  _

_ “What did I do wrong?” Quentin sobs, with his last breath before all he can do is scream.  _

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Q. Eliot, why does he think he did something wrong?” 

“You fucking tell me, Julia. I don’t know what he’s seeing, get your boyfriend here and maybe he can tell us.” 

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, he’s already mad enough, that would be…” 

“I was being sarcastic, Alice.”

Quentin can only whimper and burrow into soft blankets and hope there’s no more dreams. Please, no more. “So many nightmares, years of nightmares, I’m so tired,” he whispers. “I’m so tired, I want to go home.”

“You can,” the voice tells him — oh. Eliot.  _ It’s Eliot _ . 

“Can’t,” Quentin says. “Don’t have one anymore. Even… even Narnia isn’t…” 

God but he’s tired. He’s tired and so heavy, the last time he felt so heavy he lost the strength to run. But he doesn’t have to run this time, does he? “I’m so tired.” 

“Sleep then. I won’t let anything happen to you. 

Quentin shouldn’t believe him. The nightmares know better. But… but he sleeps anyway.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


In Quentin’s dream, he stands before a huge cracked table made of stone. He’s seen it before, because once a year the Narnians celebrate Aslan’s rebirth and the defeat of the White Witch. The royals and their household always hold a ceremony at Aslan’s How, so Quentin has seen the Stone Table in its underground home, has felt watched by the carving of Aslan in the cave wall behind it. 

But he’s never seen it like this. Never seen it in the open air, under the green-washed blue of a Narnian sky, surrounded by upright stone slabs like a version of Stonehenge. And he’s never looked at the crack and seen it as he saw the opening he jumped through, out of the Meadows and into the Eastern Ocean. But now, the crack in the stone is a rip in the world, and through it Quentin sees the familiar greyness of the Meadows, the white poplars oddly bright in the dimness of it all. He backs away, tripping over his own feet and landing on the stone. 

“This can’t be real,” he says to no one, but he gets an answer anyway. 

“Of course it is not real,” echoes Aslan’s voice, as around Quentin the How grows up, until he is in the deep caves lit by torchlight. “Dreams never are, but they are important anyway. Come! Follow my voice!”

What in the… Well. With no better choice, Quentin gets to his feet and walks toward where Aslan’s voice seemed to be coming. Into the tunnel that leads outside, except that with every step the echo is different, like he’s no longer in a cave, like he’s… he’s… 

In a greyscale room, facing a mirror filled with a swirling vortex of stars, and oh God no.

There are asphodel flowers at his feet, and Quentin stares as the mirror clears to show his own face. But not as he is now, shoulder-length white hair and Narnian clothes, but with short dark hair (was his hair that dark, before?) dressed entirely in black. In the black clothes he’d dumped over the side of the _ Dawn Treader. _

“Follow my voice!” Aslan calls again, and the mirror wavers like liquid, like he could just step through. But he can’t, this is the room he died in, he wants to run back to the How but when he looks he sees white poplar trees. So there’s nothing for it, and Quentin closes his eyes, stepping up to and through the mirror he once died to fix. 

And then there’s sunlight warm on his face and he blinks, looking up into a shimmery blue sky, the lost sky of Fillory. He’s on — he’s on a cliff, he’s on the cliff, but Eliot and Margo, Alice and Penny, the old man, they aren’t here. Only Aslan is here on the cliff by the sea where four Brakebills students became Kings and Queens of Fillory, and Quentin goes to his knees instinctively. 

“I don’t understand what’s happening. I don’t dream like this.” 

“If ever you have a chance to meet Susan Pevensie — and you may, for she was granted a long life in which to take the lessons she learned in Narnia and change an old, twisted system — you should ask her to tell a little of what I said to her and her brother Peter on their second visit to Narnia.” 

Their second visit — an old, twisted system — oh  _ fuck _ , their second visit. “Am I being banished from Narnia? The window — people have plans to —” There were New Fillorians and Narnians talking of trade, there were friendships, even a few romances that had bloomed since the window opened, surely Aslan wouldn’t be so cruel — 

“You are not being sent home as Peter and Susan were sent, for it was necessary for them to belong to Earth. Susan found a way to belong to all the worlds, now that the man who locked her away is dead — by your actions, in fact.” 

“What?” Quentin asks. 

“I tell each person only their own story, and this piece is part of yours,” Aslan says. “For it is that debt, incurred unknowingly, that helped guide you to Narnia as a place of healing. But not a place to stay forever, not for you. You are not Lucy or Edmund… or others. You will be able to visit through the window, but I think you know now what you are. A lost king of lost Fillory, a lost prince of New Fillory who is now found. A child of Earth who does not yet need to return but you will eventually, at least to visit.”

“I’m — I’m Narnian now, I’ve given my magic, everything I have, I don’t belong anywhere else, I —” 

Quentin thinks of a fountain surrounded by Mosaic patterns. His crown at its base. He thinks of a room hidden away in the trunk of a tree, all the ways he might have been saved if he had waited for it, had faith. Part of him regrets it, the lost trust, the anger. Would he be happier now if he had waited, if he had let himself be saved like part of him has so desperately wanted? 

Eliot is taking care of him now, isn’t he? That, that’s being saved  _ now _ , and as for before, well… Quentin saved himself, didn’t he? He had the strength to do that, to find his own way out, he did that after he killed himself. His mistake, his fix, he’s thought that many times in defiance, but never pride, not until this moment — 

It  _ is  _ something to be proud of, isn’t it? Finding a way out without knowing there would be anywhere safe to go? But he has to wonder...

“Why can people save themselves from the Meadows?” he hears himself asking. And he could be wrong but he thinks the Lion smiles. 

“Because in all the worlds, there are those who can defy the laws of Nature and the Deep Magic, at least for a time. With magics of their own, with technology, with other forces you have never seen and would not have a name for. But all worlds can be reached if you find your way to the Neitherlands or the Wood Between the Worlds. Equally, anyone in the Meadows can find the way out of the Underworld. It requires no special knowledge or gift or power, it requires only a strength of spirit to take that last jump. It restores a balance to have these places in between, where anyone can simply  _ act _ , if they choose.”

That doesn’t completely make sense, those can’t be the only places that cause balance, and Quentin starts to ask, but Aslan cuts him off. “There are other kinds, but those are not stories you need to know, Quentin Coldwater.” 

“Yes, Aslan,” Quentin says, because he knows enough about Aslan to know when not to push. “What — what happens now?” 

“What happens now is that you have much to discuss, and much to decide. Go through the door now,” Aslan orders, and his breath is a warm wind against Quentin’s back as he turns to face the white doorframe. Except it flickers, and then it’s a familiar wooden door — he mended it how many times? —- that Quentin steps up to and pushes open —

  
  


<><><>

  
  


He’s not in his room, Quentin realizes that as soon as he opens his eyes. His bed, while a very nice four-poster entirely too big for one person, does not have a heavily embroidered canopy and curtains, for one thing. The curtains are closed, hiding him from view, and that’s something of a relief because it means he can try and gather himself a little before anyone knows he’s awake. He needs the time, because - 

He thinks of the gallery room again, thinks of the fountain at its center. And more than that, of the… workroom inside the tree. 

_ “You know what, Quentin? Be angry all you want. But don’t you dare say we didn’t actually miss you. That ‘bullshit prince thing’ was because we missed you, because making sure you’d never be forgotten seemed like the only thing we knew we could do!” _

Maybe Quentin should feel guilty for his anger, now. Now that he knows his anger was partly born out of incomplete information. He does feel  _ sheepish _ , a little, because he knows that Edmund, Lucy, Caspian, Kirel, they’d all tried to tell him in their own ways that things didn’t seem to quite match up with what he’d believed. So yes, Quentin regrets that he hadn’t gotten suspicious sooner, hadn’t asked more questions sooner instead of simply raging. 

But the thing is, any of them could have stopped him in his tracks at any time if they’d just  _ said something. _ So why didn’t they? Why did they get mad like he had no right to be upset based on what he knew, instead of telling him what he didn’t know? He remembers Margo had said something about things they didn’t think he’d believe if they told him in Narnia, and actually that’s fair. He probably wouldn’t have. But then he came to New Fillory and they still didn’t tell him? 

It just doesn’t make sense.

He hears a door opening and goes very still, trying to listen. 

“How’s he doing?” That’s Margo, sounding more than a little worried, actually. 

“I don’t know,” comes Eliot’s voice in reply, followed by a tired sigh. “His fever broke last night, the healers said at this point he’s just sleeping it off. That he’s through the worst of it. But I just — Bambi, I —” 

Eliot’s voice breaks, and Quentin’s fingers curl in the sheets under him. Apparently, hearing Eliot cry still hurts like a motherfucker, which is no surprise really but seems vaguely unfair, somehow. 

“He almost died again. Almost died without anything fixed and I just — it would be one thing if he just fucked back off to Narnia and chose to never come back. I could deal with that, if I knew he was happy there. As long as I knew he was all right, somewhere. But losing him again? Him dying again? God. I should have just fucking told him everything from the beginning.” 

“After how he reacted when we showed up? I’m not saying I wouldn’t do the same thing in his shoes, which I remember up until he’s snarling at us again and then I lose my temper,” Margo admits, “but he wasn’t gonna believe us, El. He told us we weren’t his friends anymore, that he didn’t want to talk to us, he was convinced we didn’t even miss him. We needed him to be here, for proof, and honestly I still didn’t think he was ready to listen. Which I told you —” 

“And I made the mistake of listening to you, so that Kady ended up doing it and he flipped the fuck out! I know him better than anyone —” 

“Better than Julia?” 

“Fifty years beats twenty-some,” Eliot says harshly. “Even if we can’t remember all of it I have seen Quentin in more varied ways than she has. I should have told him myself and this wouldn’t have happened.” 

“But you said he’s going to be all right,” Margo says, sounding puzzled now.

“That doesn’t change that he almost died! Again! What fucking idiot created the spindle bushes anyway…” 

“Could have been any of us, we’ve all seen Sleeping Beauty,” Margo says. “I swear our palace looks like something Disney from a distance, just can’t ever put my finger on which one. Look, El. He’s going to be OK, and he knows now. And for fuck’s sake, even if he didn’t know, you taking care of him through the fever should prove —” 

“I didn’t take care of him to prove anything, Margo.” 

“I didn’t say you did, but it is pretty concrete as a demonstration that you weren’t lying when you said you still care about him.” 

Really, Quentin ought to give some sign that he’s awake, because eavesdropping is rude or some such bullshit. Still, after all the not telling him things, he doesn’t think he can be blamed for wanting to pick up some information first. And it - well. He’s kind of ticked off all over again, frankly. Less viciously and more… More a tired kind of frustration, because holy shit, what a fucking mess. 

What a mess. No wonder the Pevensies and Caspian — and Kady — had all been so unimpressed with the situation. With hindsight and more information, Quentin isn’t impressed either, with any of them. Including himself, because he’s smart enough to know that his Narnian friends are observant, intelligent people, and he… might have just dismissed their takes on the situation because he was too bitter to care. 

Although he’ll always think he had a right to be.

Anyway. Sign of waking up. Quentin groans softly and sits up, deliberately making noise as he does so. Sure enough, a moment later one of the curtains is pulled open. “Q — sorry, Quentin. You’re awake,” Eliot says, and  _ oh _ , Quentin remembers that smile, the one that lights up Eliot’s whole face. 

“You can call me Q again,” he says quietly, because he’s not sure what else to say. His voice is hoarse, his throat dry.

“That just for El or in general? Good to see you awake,” Margo says from where she’s sitting in a chair behind Eliot.

“In general, I think,” Quentin says, looking between them. This time his voice is even rougher, almost unrecognizable, and Eliot hands him a cup of water, fingers lingering for just a moment. The innocent contact seems to spark through Quentin’s blood, despite his exhaustion and his lingering confusion. 

Still, he drinks the water, and stares down into the empty cup as he says, “Why didn’t you tell me? About — about the tree. You —” 

“Eliot wanted to, if it helps,” Margo says when Eliot only frowns. “I told him we should wait till we got you here because then we’d have the proof to show you. Given how pissed you were with us, I didn’t think you’d believe it unless we had the proof.”

Quentin considers that. “I probably wouldn’t have,” he concedes. “But why — why not tell me once I got here? I know i was still angry but, shit, you could have dragged me to that room and been like ‘shut up and listen’, it would have worked and I got the sense you kind of wanted to?” 

“We were hoping you’d settle down a little,” Eliot says. “Or Margo and Alice were. And I hoped Julia might… I don’t think any of us expected her to make things worse the way she did. I mean, Margo and I remembered the bullshit spell she did to you, but… That worked in the first place because of how well she knows you. I  _ remember  _ knowing you longer, but you and she grew up together so it’s a different  _ kind  _ of knowing.”

Quentin came to that conclusion himself a few times over the months that followed the day they did/didn’t go to the Mosaic, when wondering to himself whether Eliot or Julia knew him better now. A mostly useless mental exercise when he did it, but still, it’s a little weird to hear his own conclusions in Eliot’s voice. “That went well,” is all he says aloud, his voice very dry. 

Margo bursts out laughing. “I missed you, brat,” she says, poking Quentin in the shoulder. Quentin raises his eyebrows but doesn’t get upset; as far as he’s concerned there’s a lot more to discuss yet, but given how he almost died again, he minds Margo’s grumpy version of affection less than he might if he’d found this out and  _ not  _ suffered a major injury right afterwards. 

Eliot doesn’t laugh, those so-familiar gold-hazel eyes watching Quentin carefully. He knows, if Margo doesn’t, that the subject is far from closed. But, strangely, Quentin doesn’t really mind that either. His hazy memories of the last however many days have one constant; Eliot trying to take care of him. 

Quentin doesn’t know what he’ll feel, when the tangle of all he’s believed, all he saw, and the things he didn’t know about until now has all been sorted out. But he knows that he remembers Eliot with him when he was burning. He remembers Eliot promising that he wasn’t going to let Quentin die again, and Quentin even thinks he remembers the others checking in enough to know that it wasn’t just —  _ obligation _ . 

He knows he has a lot to think about and a lot to discuss with all of his old friends. But for the moment, it’s nice to know that at least two people are glad to see him awake, however complicated things are.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Quentin does move back to his own room as soon as he feels steady enough, though he still spends the following week sleeping more than anything else. It’s the first time he’s glad that they made him a posthumous prince — is he now a humous prince? He’s pretty sure that’s… not actually a word, and trying to figure it out makes his head hurt. So he stays curled up in his bed and reads the books that Eliot made sure would be here. 

Except — some of them are his books. Literally his copies, with his name written inside the covers with varying degrees of neatness depending on how old he was when he got the books. And Quentin knows not all of these came to Brakebills with him. He knows some of them were in the storage unit where everything from his dad’s house ended up. 

And some of the replacements aren’t books Eliot would have known Quentin had, probably. Which means — he’s  _ almost certain _ it means Julia and maybe Alice helped Eliot get these together. There’s also a few books Margo once told him he should read but he never got around to what with crises happening over and over, which means maybe she helped too? 

Things look different on this side of things, with Quentin aware of the room in the hollow tree. Different, but still not simple. Because they still didn’t tell him, and while he sort of understands, he also kind of doesn’t. Some of what Margo and Alice in particular said to him in Narnia just doesn’t make sense, and he wants to sort it all out. 

So he keeps to himself. He sits in the window seat with books or with the sketchbooks he brought from Narnia, looking out at the iridescent sea and the lavender-washed blue sky. One day it rains and he discovers storm clouds in New Fillory have a bluish-grey look. He discovers that lightning in New Fillory is Niffin-flame-blue. He watches crimson-gold sunsets and rich purple sunrises, and he tries to capture all of them in his sketchbooks the way he tried to capture the  _ Dawn Treader’s _ voyage. 

And once he feels stronger, he goes walking. Carefully, not touching any of the plants he can’t identify with certainty, just in case. There’s an apple orchard that makes him think of the Orchard Ruins at Cair Paravel, which is where he runs to sit with a book when he needs a breather. Because of course there are the other orchards. Trees heavy with peaches and plums, or a wood of citrus trees — because he remembers how Eliot could never get lemons or limes to grow at the Mosaic, and he tried more than once. 

The apples are safe, which feels like it shouldn’t quite work, yet it does. 

“Are you ever going to talk to any of us again?” 

Quentin is sitting by the little pond at the edge of the apple orchard when he hears Julia’s voice, and he sighs, waving her over. “I’m trying to think, that’s all. I’ve learned a lot that changes things, and I’m trying to process it before I do whatever I’m going to do next.” 

“You’d have known all along if you’d asked instead of assuming you knew everything,” Julia points out. Quentin clenches his jaw. 

“It wasn’t my responsibility to ask. Everyone knew what I saw, I told Margo, she told Eliot and Alice. It was for them, or for you, to tell me I didn’t know the whole story. It wasn’t my job to ask!”

“Why couldn’t you trust us?” 

“Why should I have, Julia?” 

“Because we’re your friends.”

“Right. I think we’ve already gone over how much that was worth from my perspective. Give me one good reason I should have had any faith in any of you at all,” Quentin says flatly. “Without your telling me what I didn’t know.” 

“You were so angry. We wanted you to calm down first,” Julia says. “I was sure once you calmed down you’d ask us more about what we’d been doing, and then it would come up in conversation naturally. I didn’t think you could really mean it that your visit was a one-time thing. You never would have meant it before. Look at the awful shit we said and did to each other when you first started Brakebills. How much of that did you mean?” 

“You know, given that while I  _ said  _ awful shit to you, you  _ did  _ something horrible to me, that might not be the best argument,” Quentin points out. “But we’ve considered all that settled for a long time, and I get what you’re saying. You thought my reaction was in the heat of the moment, except Alice, Margo, and Eliot could all have told you I’ve been like this since they arrived in Narnia. Which kind of hurts your theory there, Julia.” 

“I’ve never seen you so viciously angry. So I read you wrong.” Julia sighs, and then she seems to deflate a little. “I seem to have done that a lot. You really killed yourself? It really wasn’t a sacrifice?”

“It really wasn’t a sacrifice,” Quentin says quietly. “I won’t lie, in the moment I cast, the moment Everett asked me what I did, I was pretty happy with myself. In hindsight that may have been a bad thing. That one good moment kind of… took the last bit of my energy, and I forgot that being tired, that stopping to rest, would mean, well.” 

“Eternal rest,” Julia says, voice unsteady. 

“Yeah. That. It wasn’t planned, but it was definitely suicide.” 

They’re both quiet for a while after that, watching the pond water ripple in a gentle breeze. At one point, Quentin summons two apples and they sit there eating them in silence. Then, finally, Julia says, “I knew you weren’t all right. How could you be? I still — I’m still not sure what you and Eliot really are to each other but I know he means a lot to you. And you’d already been through something similar with Alice, something a little similar with me. But I thought — usually you were all right as long as you had a goal. I thought you’d be all right that long, and then… But when it was over, you were gone and I didn’t — I never wanted that.  _ Never _ .” 

“I know that,” Quentin says. 

“You accused me of wanting you to stay dead, Quentin.” 

“I mean, you did say I was punished because I tried to leave, that if I’d just moved on it wouldn’t have happened. I get that you meant to confirm I wasn’t in, like, one of the nine circles of hell or whatever, but that’s not what it sounded like,” Quentin points out. 

Julia sighs, and at first he doesn’t think she’s going to answer. Then: 

“The first magic I did was the same thing you told me you did. The cloud of playing cards. For a moment I — I actually said to the air, I asked if it was you doing this. Then I realized it was me. And I was glad to have my magic back but… You’re not a cost I wanted to pay. It shouldn’t have taken losing you for that to happen. It was wrong. However much I tried to make it mean something, even when I told myself I was honoring you, it was  _ wrong _ .”

“Magic comes from pain,” Quentin says softly. “I’m not sure that’s quite as true as we’ve been told, in hindsight, but… I thought you’d be good, because you had your magic back.” 

“You think I needed my magic more than my oldest friend? No. We both made that call before and we were both wrong to make it. I would never have chosen that trade, Quentin.” Julia reaches for both his hands and Quentin lets her, even when her grip is tight enough that it actually hurts. “I would have rather never lost you, never sat at that goddamned fire because we didn’t even have a body. Like you’d never even —” 

“Never existed at all,” Quentin says, because that had occurred to him too, more than once. Julia’s grip tightens even more, and he might actually have bruises tomorrow but Quentin ignores that, holds on possibly just as tight. 

“I’m not gonna sit here and claim I’d have given up on magic. But I wanted to have that search with you. I wanted you there when we were all loopy on fucking moon brain because we had to stay awake. I almost called you like five times because I kept forgetting —” She stops, shaking her head. “I wanted you there when we celebrated stopping the apocalypse. When Hope was born, you should have been her godfather, I — it wasn’t supposed to be like this, Q. How do we  _ fix this _ ?” 

Quentin tips his head back to look at the lavender-tinted blue sky, the grass underneath him tickling his palms. There’s no opium in the air of New Fillory, but there is something here. The very  _ newness  _ of the world, maybe. Or maybe there’s some effect of their using his blood for their spell that he doesn’t know about. Or both. 

Maybe it doesn’t always matter. 

“I don’t know,” he finally says, looking over at Julia. “Maybe we don’t fix it. Maybe we start over, and let it heal itself with the new growth.” It’s a new world. Maybe newness is the answer. “Why don’t you tell me about your work at Brakebills, or about your daughter? I have a ton of Narnia stories, if you’d like.” 

Julia considers him for a long moment. “I can do that. But first — I’m sorry for how I reacted when I first talked to you. And I’m sorry I didn’t see what was happening with you before it was too late, that I didn’t stick to my plan to contact you. If I’d done that seance, if I’d known you were trying to get out, maybe I could have done something — in the end you didn’t need outside help but maybe I could have helped you find one of those escape routes faster, something.” 

Quentin nods, throat tight with emotion. Then he swallows hard, finding his voice enough to say, “I wish you had, it probably would have gone faster that way. And… I’m sorry I was afraid to tell you what was happening. Maybe — maybe that’s the real problem, Jules. We let so much just… slip by, assuming we knew what was happening.” 

“Maybe. So now we start with swapping stories?” Julia says with a tiny smile, and Quentin finds himself smiling back. 

“Well, it is talking, so why not?”

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Quentin finds Alice in the royal library, which is pretty on point actually. “Why does the new Head Librarian want to know about the Narnian royals so badly?” he asks, because Julia had mentioned it offhandedly during one of her stories and now he’s curious. His understanding is that one of Alice’s duties as Queen is as ambassador to the New Library, who are supposedly trying to be a good repository of knowledge for the multiverse now.

(“That’s what Alice says, and Penny and I have done a little work with them,” Julia said. “Kady won’t deal with them but that’s all right because she and I are linking all magic practitioners anyway. Margo and Eliot don’t trust any of it either, but they let Alice handle it.”)

Alice looks up at him over the top of her glasses. “Finally figured out how wrong you were?” she asks sharply. 

“Finally figured out that if I was too angry to think, you guys were too stubborn to help your own case,” Quentin snaps back. “I’m not going to apologize, if that’s what you wanted.” 

“Well, neither am I,” Alice says. “So where does that leave us?” 

“I don’t know, Alice. If I end up staying, you outrank me, but beyond that, who the fuck knows? I guess it leaves us finally being completely honest with each other, which is better than we were, probably, but that’s about it. Could you answer my question, please?” 

Alice sighs. “I don’t know. But I read the Narnia books too and I’m pretty sure Sue Evans is actually Susan Pevensie. Everett had her locked up in the bowels of the Library for years because she challenged him for power. She wanted to do the reform that’s finally happening now back in the 1960s. But she couldn’t beat him, he was significantly older and had more support, more knowledge if not more raw power.” 

It doesn’t surprise Quentin that Susan Pevensie became a magician. Edmund can do magic, after all, and he’s always suspected Lucy could be amazing at it if she wanted to. She’s chosen not to. It does make him wonder about Eustace; if magic has a genetic component, which it seems like it must, did he have magical aptitude? What might being a dragon for a while do to affect that? But that’s not a question he can answer, so Quentin turns to things he can find out more about.

“So when I killed Everett…” he says, thinking aloud.

“The Monster Twins massacred a significant amount of the Librarians, and then you killed Everett. Zelda made sure Sue wasn’t let out, though. I’m the one who found out about her. Things were in enough of a shambles by then that no one would have dared to stop me.”

“Good for you, and I mean that,” Quentin says, thinking of the songs about Queen Susan the Gentle and her beauty. Thinking of Edmund and Lucy talking about their sister with her sharp, well-aimed arrows, and her mind that was even sharper and even better-aimed, beauty as just one tool in the service of that mind. He thinks of someone else with the bright energy and old eyes of a Pevensie held captive for Aslan knows how long. 

But he thinks he’s not surprised that she came out still determined upon her course. He also thinks that maybe his own unintentional assist to one of the Lion’s Chosen is why he found himself in Narnia at all, because that certainly seems to fit with what his fever dream of Aslan implied. 

(A dream, but he knows somehow that conversation was every bit as real as the one at the edge of the world.)

Alice’s voice breaks into his thoughts. “If you stay. Do you think that’s still on the table?” 

Quentin shrugs. “I don’t know. Is it?” he asks, watching her until she sighs, pushing back her hair. 

“If it was just my call and not Eliot’s and Margo’s too, I’m not sure, but yeah, it still stands. You were pretty horrible to us, you know.” 

“And I had every reason to be,” Quentin replies, as calm as Alice is. He meant what he said; he’s not apologizing. 

Alice sighs. “We could go around this in circles forever, couldn’t we? It’s just — you wanted to be saved, and I didn’t, and we both made the absolute worst call for each other thinking we knew best, didn’t we?” 

Quentin thinks it’s a little more complicated than that, but if you break it down to essentials… “That’s pretty much what’s at the bottom of it all, yeah. And I don’t think you ever stopped being angry at me either, did you?” 

“I thought I had, but maybe not so much,” Alice says. “I am glad you’re alive, you do know that, right?” 

“Yeah,” Quentin says with a sigh. “I do know that.”

And maybe there’s more to be said, but it can’t be said now, Quentin thinks. There’s too much bitter venom between them still, from the things they’ve already said and done. Julia’s easy, in a lot of ways, because whatever happens they still have the first two decades of their lives to fall back on, a common ground that lets them approach each other in good faith. 

He and Alice don’t have that. What they have is a mess of their own making, one or the other always managing to shatter what they try to build. Quentin’s not sure where that leaves them beyond a truce, really. “I have a feeling I am going to end up sticking around,” he says quietly. “Staying or splitting time between here and Earth, or going back to Earth and visiting, I don’t know how it’ll go for sure yet.”

“Is telling you all it takes to make you decide not to go back to Narnia? After all you said about liking to be useful and things like that?” Alice asks, eyes narrowed slightly behind her glasses. Quentin could take offense, but it’s actually a reasonable question. 

“No, but — things work a little differently in Narnia. Not everyone stays. There was… always a kind of time limit on how long I’d be based there, though with the window open I certainly don’t ever plan to rule out going back to visit from time to time. I could be wrong, but I have a feeling that all this is me hitting my time limit.” 

Alice nods, some tension going out of her. “So I guess that means you and I have time to figure out where we stand, huh?” 

“I guess we do,” Quentin says, and he leaves it at that for now, walking away so Alice can get back to her research. It should hurt more, maybe, to have nothing more than a truce with the woman who was his first love, but in a way it kind of feels inevitable. There’s too much broken between them, so many jagged pieces to cut them up when they deal with each other. 

So for now they have a truce. It’s less miserable than yelling all the time, anyway.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Quentin does track Kady down long enough to thank her, but there was never all that much between them. Whatever might happen, well, it’ll be brand new. Quentin’s open to it, but it also means there just isn’t much to say right now. 

As for Margo, and above all  _ Eliot _ … Quentin still isn’t quite sure. What was said the morning he woke up isn’t nearly enough, he’s sure of that, but knowing that and knowing where to start are unfortunately two very different things. And there’s the letter, still, unopened on his shelf. Quentin still thinks it doesn’t matter very much because a letter never sent is still just — not sent, even if it ends up in the hands of the addressee anyway. 

Except it seems to matter a great deal to Eliot, or at least it had mattered enough that nothing Quentin had said to any of them seemed to cut Eliot as deep as when Quentin had called the letter trash. He knows he should read it, but somehow he hasn’t been able to bring himself to open it. He keeps thinking that this could have saved him, that just a message that Eliot would be all right, didn’t hate him for the Monster, it would have been something to hold onto. Something that might have been enough to make him keep running. 

Maybe he wouldn’t have made it out unscathed. Maybe he would have been burned, or he would have lost a limb to the blast. He had a weird dream once where he survived the backlash but woke up to find he’d lost half a leg. That would have been hard, but he doesn’t think it would have hurt as much as knowing he’d been considered a more acceptable loss than basically anyone else in their group and its extended circle. 

He knows that didn’t stay true, now. But it  _ was  _ true long enough for Alice to throw away the soul grain and for Eliot to throw away the letter. Or it feels like that. In some ways Quentin knows he’s not being entirely fair; he remembers that Eliot said he was afraid to make things worse because that was what happened the last time he tried to save Quentin. Quentin, who remembers telling the Monster that his mother was right about how he breaks things, can’t pretend he doesn’t understand that. 

He understands, and the fact that it didn’t last, that when the dust settled they did try to save him, when they had a better chance of success without further damage, well… It eases the hurt, even if it doesn’t erase it. He wishes that it could erase the hurt, but less pain is better than nothing at all, right? 

Margo finds him in the room of paintings, standing in front of the coronation one again. “Eliot was pickier than any of us, you know,” she says, pitching her voice quiet but still Quentin jumps. Margo smiles a little at his reaction, then settles perched on the rim of the fountain, running her fingers through the water. Quentin watches her, not sure what to say. He does know he doesn’t need to find words; this is Margo, she’ll make it clear what she wants to talk about. 

“We would have helped you,” Margo says finally, some kind of strange edge to her voice. She’s staring at him, and Margo’s intense anyway, she can scare the hell out of most people with a look. But Quentin can’t remember her ever looking at him like this, like she’s trying to see all of him at once, like she’s not sure how many more times she’ll see him. 

“What?” Quentin asks. 

“The other day, you asked if we would have helped you if we’d known you were trying to get out. The answer is yes. I don’t have a fucking clue how, but hey. We’d have come up with something, kicked down the goddamned doors or hijacked a dragon, whatever. And send you back? Fuck that shit, even if you came back some kind of undead, we’d Santa Clarita Diet you till we figured out how to make you human again if that’s what it took. We got the weird brain boy out of El’s head using Pervert Ghost’s body since he missed being a ghost, we’d have figured something out.” 

And it — it hits Quentin like a fucking  _ truck _ , because he’d asked the question expecting the worst, barely even letting himself wish for the best, and yet he hadn’t realized till this instant how much he needed to hear it that bluntly. That the only thing keeping him from help was that no one had known he needed it. His knees fold underneath him and he finds himself sitting on the floor, looking up at her. 

“I didn’t know. I thought…” 

“Yeah, I think the fact that you had to ask makes what you thought pretty clear,” Margo says, and she’s looking at him in that oddly soft way she had when they sat on the steps that day after the Welters game. Quentin still remembers it well, impatience fading away to something gentler, even as her words were every bit as blunt as ever. “That night, the bonfire… You saw the crown in the fountain here, I’m sure. Julia’s the one who stored it, I didn’t know it hadn’t burned, but… That whole night I kept thinking. I kept remembering the day I put that on your head, I kept thinking about how I didn’t remember you eating pizza with the rest of us when I came back with my axes. How quiet you were, and…” 

Margo sighs. “When we thought Eliot was dead, I told Fen I couldn’t cry out all the sadness, that if I started I wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t let myself feel how much losing you hurt. I had Eliot to worry about, I was fucking terrified losing you would break him. And there was Fillory, and…” 

“I get it,” Quentin says. “I thought you were done with me before I died, honestly. You — didn’t really talk to me or anything.” 

“Yeah, because if I asked you how you were doing, I knew you’d be as fucked up as me, and if you broke I was gonna break. I thought once it was over there’d be time, but…” 

“Julia said that too,” Quentin says softly. “Even I more or less thought there’d be time. I didn’t — I didn’t go there to die, I just… when the opportunity presented itself, I guess.” 

Margo’s face does something funny, almost like she’s about to cry, before she gets off the fountain edge and comes to sit next to him. “Next time that opportunity shows up? You kick it to the goddamn curb, OK?” 

“That’s the plan,” Quentin says. “I, um. Is the offer to stick around here still open?” He’d told Alice he didn’t know what he was going to do, where he would settle, but it would be… most straightforward, if he can settle here. He doesn’t have to be a prince, they gave that title to a ghost, he has no real claim on it. But he can manage here better than Earth, he thinks.

Margo raises her eyebrows. “Do you want it to be?” 

“I have some things to sort out, but… Yeah, I think so,” Quentin says. “I did miss you guys. Even when I hated it. And — I won’t say I’m not still angry. There’s still shit I have to say, questions I have. It still fucking hurts that it took you so long to decide trying to save me was worth the effort.” Seeing her about to speak, Quentin shakes his head. “There were reasons. I get that. It still hurts. But between here and Earth it’s more sensible to stay here, and I do want to stick around. I’m not going to make things any better avoiding you, and now we understand each other better, I think?” 

“Well, most of us. You and Eliot need to talk, you know.” 

“I know,” Quentin says. “I’m not sure where to start, but I know.” 

“He told me everything, after the first spell we tried failed. Broke the fuck down finally and told me all of it. Right here in this room. He missed you more than anyone, I can say that with fucking certainty.” 

Which is nice to hear and all. But while he doesn’t say as much to Margo, truth is that it’s also not particularly  _ helpful _ . It still doesn’t tell him what to say. 

It’s all coming back to that fucking letter, isn’t it?

  
  


<><><>

  
  


It takes another two days before Quentin feels ready. In that time, he sees Eliot more than once, but always in company and they only talk casually, at least at first. Even when Quentin tells him that second morning, “I think I’m staying, at least some of the time.” 

Eliot’s eyes light up in a way Quentin can’t miss, not after a lifetime together, but his face stays mostly composed, his smile a restrained one. “Good, Q. I hoped you would, once you knew everything.” But he doesn’t talk about why they didn’t say anything, why he didn’t. And Quentin decides to push it, seeing Kady and Julia slipping from the room out of the corner of his eye. 

“Why didn’t you tell me? That day at the beach at Cair Paravel, you hinted at it, you said I didn’t know everything, but you didn’t tell me. Even when we got here. Margo said you wanted to, so why not?” 

Eliot sighs, dropping into a chair. “Honestly, I didn’t know how to tell you. I could have just done what Kady ended up doing, but it didn’t seem right to spring it on you like that. And given how you reacted and what happened because of that, I’m going to say I was right on that one.” 

“You know me better, you could probably have calmed me down better than Kady; she didn’t expect that at all,” Quentin points out. 

“In hindsight, that occurred to me, but at the time I was trying to figure out how to explain it gently. It was mostly just a bad judgment call on my part, Q. And that day, the things you said, I…” Eliot pauses, taking a deep breath. “Did you really think we’d just send you back, Quentin?” 

Quentin hesitates, and then slowly explains about the Mist, and his nightmares, and how they just would not go away. “And on top of that it — when I died, I saw Penny. Our original one. He… he processed me, I guess. And he told me you guys would thrive because of what I did. He made it sound like dying like that was what you needed from me, the best thing I could do for you. And I — when no one came for me it, it seemed like proof.” 

“And you  _ believed  _ that? Where did he tell you this, in some Underworld Library office?” 

“Well. Some of it. But he, um. He also took me to the bonfire. Which is where he told me most of it,” Quentin admits. 

“Hang on. You saw that, you saw us at the bonfire, you saw me a fucking wreck at the well and you still thought I didn’t want you back?” 

“I also saw you practically flirting with Rupert Chatwin on the way to the well!” Quentin says, throwing up his hands. “I never said I didn’t think you grieved for me — that was even another thing Penny said, that I should appreciate the genuine grief, because it proved you’d all cared, but missing me and wanting me back are not the same thing.” 

“Are you fucking thick-headed? What about me falling apart twice  _ where you could see it _ made you think I was better off without you?!” Eliot’s on his feet and Quentin is too; Quentin doesn’t really remember when that happened but he’s aware of Eliot’s significant height advantage in a way he isn’t always, blinking up at him. He can’t find words, but Eliot has a few more, apparently.

“How the fuck could you think — I don’t know how you could think that.” 

“Well, you got over it pretty fast after that,” Quentin says, and this bitterness is more jealousy than anger, something he has far less right to. He knows that, but he can’t help it. 

“Yeah, well, in case you’ve forgotten, Quentin, I try to hide my emotions. And you were seeing the same act I put on for everyone. But if you’d asked me, or read my fucking letter —” 

“Maybe if you’d  _ sent  _ the fucking letter none of this would be happening! All I needed was a — was something to hold onto. I don’t know if whatever you said would have been that. And in the end I’m still the one who stopped running. It’s still my fault in the end. And I know you tried to save me after all. I just… I still don’t know… you said you were scared, but…” 

Eliot takes a deep breath. “Quentin, please read my letter. And then, uh. Meet me at the peach and plum orchard?” 

“That’s a little pointed, isn’t it?” Quentin asks softly. “Can’t you just tell me what’s in it?” 

“Some of it, yeah. But some of it’s pretty specific to when I wrote it, to what was going on behind my act back then. I just think it will help.” 

So Quentin goes back to his room, takes the letter off the shelf and sits on the foot of his bed, staring at it. He can still remember the scornful way one of Lady Melinoe’s minions had given it to him, can still remember the shrinking spell and the years he spent wearing it around his neck. The years he spent clinging to his pain and his anger. 

He still has so much of both to work through. But he still cares about his friends, he’s still in love with Eliot and it seems like he will be for the rest of his life, come what may. 

_ “It is one thing to take a friend for a lover who understands loss, quite another to keep a lover whose heart still belongs elsewhere.”  _

_ “I can’t give it back to him.”  _

_ “My dear Quentin, I don’t think you ever reclaimed it from him in the first place. From any of them — they all hold pieces of you, of your heart and soul, and we here in Narnia have never had all of you, however much we or you may have wished that we did.” _

Kirel had been right, and so now here Quentin is. Considering giving Eliot the rest of his heart, one more time. But to do that, maybe he needs to understand _ Eliot’s _ heart first. He’s certainly had trouble with that before. 

So he takes a deep breath, and opens the envelope, unfolding the letter. 

It takes a moment to focus, and another to steady his shaking hands enough to read the words on the paper. But when he does… 

_ Quentin, _

_ They tell me I’m here because of you. Because you wouldn’t let anyone banish the Monster while it still had me. Do I thank you for that, when I woke up in a world without you? That wasn’t supposed to happen, Q. You were supposed to be there when I woke up. You were supposed to be there, I had things to tell you. What the fuck am I supposed to do without you?  _

_ They keep telling me that there’s nothing to be done. Jane fucking Chatwin says we won, that turning back time to save you would be wrong. We didn’t win, this can’t be a win without you. It’s just not possible.  _

_ So I stole this stamp. If I send this letter it’ll get to you before the Seam. But I don’t know what to ask you. Do I ask you not to go? Do I tell you to throw the bottles faster? Everett’s coming, he’s going to break the mirror before you throw both, you mend it and you die in the blast. But what if you throw them faster and he still shows up, kills you anyway in revenge? (And Alice and 23, but I’m less worried about that than I should be.) Do I tell you to take a leaf out of Margo’s book back in the day, bring a gun, one of you stand near the door and shoot the fucker? Would it work? Would anything work? _

_ I don’t know how to do this. If you were here I think you’d know. You saved Alice. You kept me alive until Margo could axe me. You’d know what to do. I don’t know. I don’t know how to do this, Q. I don’t know how to carry on without you, I don’t know how to save you. The last time I tried, I got you killed. I got you tormented for months and then you died cleaning up the mess that was partly my fault. _

_ You were supposed to be here. I need you here. I need to see you again, I need to tell you I was wrong in the throne room. I love you, I should have told you. I’m  _ **_going_ ** _ to tell you, because I’m going to see you again. Worst case scenario, I see you when I’m dead too, but that’s not what I want. I don’t know where to start, I don’t know what will work but I promise I’ll try. I’ll think of something. Somehow. _

_ Eliot _

The letter slips from Quentin’s nerveless fingers, fluttering gently to the floor. Of course, he realizes. Eliot didn’t know he committed suicide. No one knew. That’s it, that’s why Alice’s single comment had been enough, because Eliot had already thought about it. If Alice, who was there, was so sure, of course he’d thought there was no way to stop Everett, and he hadn’t known… 

It hadn’t been a lack of wanting. It had been not knowing enough, and being afraid. It really had only been that too much was unclear, it had never, for Eliot at least, been about not being worth the effort. About _ Quentin _ not being worth the effort. 

The room in the hollow tree is more Eliot’s work than anyone’s. 

If Quentin had read this letter, would he have waited for help? Maybe, maybe not. But he would have known he could go home. 

He has to go talk to Eliot. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Quentin has never walked the full length of the peach and plum orchard. It’s not just those two trees (or, as inexplicable as the trees with cheesecake fruit, trees that have both peaches and plums like some strange hybrid). As if someone decided it needed to make sense, there are nectarines and apricots too, similar fruits. 

And on the hybrid trees, a third fruit that looks like it might be a hybrid itself. Wild magic again, Quentin thinks, and considers taking one of the unnamed third fruits down to try. He decides against it, though; whatever it tastes like, it will be messy to eat and that doesn’t seem like a good idea right now. 

He finds Eliot at the end, near the wall that surrounds all of the palace grounds. There’s a garden here, half wild with flowers in every color Quentin can name and some he can’t, and Eliot is putting gardening tools away in a small stone shed when Quentin arrives. He remembers now — Eliot had always had mixed feelings about their vegetable garden, part of him learning to enjoy the work, this hands-on way to care for their little family, but also a reminder of the farm he wanted so much to forget. 

But their tiny flower garden? Eliot had loved that, had found the work of it a strange comfort and the flowers had ended up everywhere. In their little house, petals strewn about on the Mosaic, tucked into all their hair. 

There’s an empty bed, fresh-turned dirt just waiting for something to be planted there, and Quentin finds himself thinking that his moonflowers would be perfect here, if Eliot didn’t mind sharing the space. And that idea, the idea of being out here in the sunlight together, an echo of their past but still something new… It doesn’t hurt. 

It doesn’t hurt, and more than that Quentin  _ wants  _ it. He wants to be here, to see what is left of his old relationships that can be made to grow anew. He wants to be here with Eliot, he still wants what he wanted in the throne room, what he’s never  _ stopped  _ wanting even when he wished he could stop. 

He wants to belong here again. In the end, it’s as simple as that, in spite of everything.

“The letter would have worked,” he hears himself say, and Eliot whirls around to stare at him. Quentin keeps walking until they’re standing face to face, reaches out and takes Eliot’s hands. There’s no dirt on them, but then he’d long since perfected a small cleaning charm for that. Quentin tangles their fingers and they fit as well as they ever did. 

“It would have worked because I only needed a reason to save myself. But you didn’t know that. You had no way to know that. So I still had to save myself, and maybe I needed to, El. Maybe I needed to fight my way back because I’m the one who stopped fighting before.” 

“I thought you’re the one who said destiny was bullshit,” Eliot says softly, gripping Quentin’s hands tightly. 

“I did. And it is. But that doesn’t mean some things don’t turn out to be what you need, even if they suck,” Quentin says. “Life is weird that way. And I’ve learned there are places where destiny sometimes is a thing, if only because there’s beings directing it here and there. I kinda think I half fell into one of those situations, but I’m out of it now.” 

“So what are you going to do now? When you’re holding my hands and calling me ‘El’ again?” Eliot asks, gold-hazel eyes searching Quentin’s face. 

Quentin looks up at him, and his love still aches but it’s not a bad ache anymore, somehow. What is he going to do? There are so many things he still has to work through, so many things he remembers. The chill of the Meadows, the chittering ghosts. How it felt to have sunlight on his face again. 

How it felt, in a firelit grove, to realize he was still in love with Eliot. How it felt, when he woke up from the thorn fever, when he read that letter, to know that he’s willing to offer up his heart again for real, not just the helpless lost bit of it he’ll never get back. 

He remembers how determined he was, when he first fell into Narnia, to find a way to belong. He still wants to belong. He still wants… all the things he thought were impossible. 

“I’m going to stick around, and see what’s left of all my old relationships,” Quentin says. “I’m going to stay, and… I’m listening now, if there’s anything you still want to tell me.” Maybe it’s something of a cop out, not to say the words first, but a little part of Quentin that’s still hurting wants to hear it first. 

Eliot is silent for a moment, looking at him with an intensity Quentin only remembers seeing once. In a park, in that last moment before Eliot was swept under again by the Monster. Eliot’s looking at him like he’s the only thing in the world, and for this moment Quentin feels like maybe it’s true, that maybe the two of them are all that exist. 

“I love you,” Eliot says softly, his eyes never leaving Quentin’s. “And I’ll love you even if you went back to Narnia, if you left me again and never came back. That day in the throne room, I should have told you to just wait a few days while we caught our breath. That day I broke out or the day Penny snuck in to see me, I should have made sure you knew to hang on for me, to be there when I woke up.” 

And even though Quentin’s thought that too, has said to Eliot just today that all he needed was a reason to hang on, he can’t quite — 

“I did it to myself, at the Seam, El. But now I know it was worth fighting to come back even thinking I’d be alone. Like I said, maybe I needed to know that. Maybe we both needed to know things we know now.” 

“I don’t fucking care. I didn’t want to learn anything without you. You’re staying? With me?” Eliot asks, and then Quentin realizes he never actually said the words back to Eliot. 

“I’m staying. With you, if you’ll have me. I love you too, Eliot.” 

Next moment, Quentin’s being all but crushed against Eliot’s chest in a desperate hug, and he’s clinging back just as tightly. He wants this, oh God, now that he’s letting himself it’s dizzying, how much he’s wanted this all along. To come home and have someone hold him, to have Eliot hold him. To know that he’s  _ wanted _ , not just allowed until he earns more, not just tolerated out of obligation to past friendship.

He doesn’t know which of them moves first, but the next thing Quentin knows he’s gone up on tiptoe and he’s kissing Eliot. Desperate deep kisses and light affectionate ones, until he’s breathless.

“I do have to go back to Narnia for a while,” he says softly. 

“What? Why?” Eliot asks, and Quentin shifts enough that he can look up at him. 

“Because, El. They took me in, all right? I literally fell out of the Asphodel Meadows into the ocean. It’s not just that they had the basic decency not to let me drown, they let me join the crew instead of just leaving me on the next bit of land. They let me become a member of the royal household, let me ramble about Narnia doing work for the crown. They were good to me on a personal level. I can’t just leave them high and dry without a word. Although I kind of think they’re expecting a result like this.” 

Eliot sighs, carding a hand through Quentin’s hair. “I see the point. All right, I wouldn’t stop you anyway, but I also have to agree with you, damn it.” 

Quentin laughs, and leans in for another quick kiss. He feels giddy. He knows it won’t last, that there is still so much to work through, but he’d never thought happiness would be an option for him again. So he’s going to soak it up while he can, the same way he took in the sunlight and the smell of the ocean lilies at the edge of the world. 

He’s learned to value a second chance, in more ways than one. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Three months later, Quentin is preparing to leave Cair Paravel for… Well. Hopefully not the last time ever, but for the last time as a resident of the castle itself. He came back to Narnia a couple of weeks after his conversation with Eliot to find a surprise: Eustace, returned to Narnia after almost a decade on his end, so that he’s roughly the same age as his cousins now. 

Eustace came with a friend, Jill Pole. A friend he made at Avalon Academy, which just happens to be the English version of Brakebills. 

Most of the weeks Quentin has spent in Narnia have been devoted to working with Eustace and Jill to show them some of the Narnian magic he learned — and to make copies of the books Coriakin once gave him — so that with his departure Narnia will gain two court magicians. 

“You know, even some of your Earth magic is different from ours,” Jill says one day. She’s curled up in one of the library’s window seats with one of Quentin’s old books from Brakebills in front of her. He’d copied those too before he’d even come back, having found them in his room at Wavespire along with the books he’d read for pleasure. 

Quentin, looking up from the diagram he’s doing for Eustace, thinks Jill reminds him of a redheaded Julia or Alice in her quest to learn more as fast as possible. “Well,” he says after a moment, “remember, I went to Brakebills a few decades after you went to Avalon. Classical magicians are set in their ways, but that’s still enough time — not to mention a different continent — for things to have changed. Actually, speaking of, no one ever told me how you two got here?” 

“We opened a door, that was all. Well, not quite — Eustace and I were trying to see Narnia, to see if we could find out what had happened to his cousins because there was a woman from the Library of the Neitherlands interested in speaking with us and we didn’t know why.”

Quentin, who might know why, says nothing. He’s already decided to keep the speculation about Susan Pevensie to himself, because for one thing he doesn’t know that she and Head Librarian Sue Evans are one and the same. For another, if it is true, she’s the Head Librarian and a Pevensie. Both of those things mean that if she sets out to reconnect with her family or even just find out more about them, she’s going to do it and damn whoever tries to stop her. 

“Anyway, we cast the spell and it didn’t work,” Eustace chimes in. “But when we opened the door to leave the room where we did it, the door opened into the Orchard Ruins you love so much.” 

“Eustace was confused at first, because he said he’d never been to mainland Narnia before, but then we ran into someone who’d been on the Dawn Treader and they sorted it out for us,” Jill explains. “And we’re here just in time to take over from you! Lucy says Aslan must have known new magicians would be needed around here.” 

Quentin fidgets a little. “I’m sure I was never quite that crucial,” he says, a little awkwardly.

“I’m not sure, actually,” Eustace says thoughtfully. “I’ve been thinking. Aslan must have wanted Jill and me to come here, right? We weren’t trying to open a door, we were just trying to look. Well, what was happening here? No big emergency, but you were leaving. The first Narnian rulers had the magic of that tree Professor Kirke planted on Aslan’s command, and my cousins had Aslan’s prophecy and Aslan’s blessing. He crowned them personally.” 

“What does that have to do with me?” Quentin asks.

“Well, not you specifically, but magic, I think. Or magicians. The White Witch conquered partly on the strength of her magic. The records of the initial Telmarine conquest imply there were wizards among their number. So what if the key to keeping a decent group in power is to give them magic? Until you showed up, that had never happened before. You taught Edmund and Caspian some magic, of course, but I think it's even more important that your magic is based in mending and crafting, things that are trustworthy. Things people all around Narnia saw you using in perfectly everyday ways. It was a kind first introduction to magic used for good.” 

“So by not being flashy, I gave magicians to come after me a better reputation?” Quentin asks, amused a little by the idea. He’d been so disappointed by his discipline even in the midst of the Monster crisis. He’s come to love it since then, the sheer  _ rightness  _ of it, but the idea that the quiet magic he’d once been so unimpressed by was just right for the occasion in a way that didn’t mean his own doom, well. 

It’s nice. 

“It’s a thought, anyway,” Eustace says with a shrug. “And you also help us have a better alliance with New Fillory.” 

That makes Quentin laugh. But he’s still thinking about it on his last morning, when he finds himself out among the Orchard Ruins one last time. It’s always been his favorite place, and there’s nothing quite like it at Wavespire in New Fillory. There are whispers here, and today Quentin can almost feel them, like the lightest brush of gossamer scarves against his arms, his hands, even his cheeks and neck or over his hair. 

“I’m going to miss you too,” he murmurs. “New Fillory is too young to have a lot of ghosts.” 

“Well, Narnia certainly isn’t that anymore.” 

Quentin turns to find Edmund standing at the broken stone where his throne once sat, one hand smoothing over the worn uneven edge. “No, Narnia isn’t new, whatever else she is. Stunningly alive, but not new.” 

“Narnia was always that,” Edmund says with a tiny smile. “I sensed that even when I didn’t want to, even when I wanted to hate everything about it. But I’m far past that now, and I think you’re finished with your own fury?” 

Quentin shrugs. “Not entirely. I’ll probably never be entirely done with the anger. Too much happened, you know?” 

“I get that. But I mean — you seem lighter now. It weighed on you, all that had happened.” 

“I guess it did. And I guess you and the others were right.” 

“Oh! Good of you to admit it!” calls a new voice, and Quentin isn’t even surprised to see Caspian approaching with Lucy behind him. “One last hurrah of the Ghost King?” Caspian adds as he comes closer. 

“I suppose,” Quentin says. But still, when all three of them are ranged in front of him, he finds himself taking a knee as he once did on the deck of the  _ Dawn Treader. _

“Quentin, what are you doing?” Lucy asks. Quentin looks up at her and smiles. Lucy and her faith. If he had a fraction of her strength, he’d be grateful for it. 

“Paying my respects to the monarchs I swore to, when I had nowhere to go and you took me in.” 

“Oh, don’t do that,” Caspian says, but Edmund and Lucy both put hands on his arm as if to quiet him. They’re both looking at him as if they understand better, and maybe they do. Or maybe they just know that Quentin feels the need to do this. 

“You were my kings and queen, and I’ll never forget anything you’ve done for me. Apparently they’re keeping the prince thing official, but I will be a Friend of Narnia wherever I am and whatever titles I hold. And… I hope we’ll be friends?”

“Of course, you dramatic magician,” Edmund says, and then he and Lucy are both hauling Quentin up and into a hug. Caspian laughs as Quentin finds himself squished by Pevensies, and is kind enough to wait until they’ve let him go to hug Quentin himself. 

“You were theirs first, but you are ours as well,” Caspian says firmly, dark eyes boring into Quentin’s. “Say the word, and we will do what we can for you. And you will always have a home here. After all, the places where you’ve worked your magic will miss you.” 

Quentin smiles. “I hope not. But I look forward to visiting.” 

“Good. By the way…” Caspian hands Quentin a ring. It’s a signet, in polished silver. He recognizes it; the Narnian crest of a roaring lion, bordered by a braided circle for three monarchs. It’s the official sigil of the royal house, used only by the royals and their closest associates. Quentin has a wax seal with the sigil but he’s never worn the ring, just a matter of preference. 

“You are still a Knight and Mage of Narnia, you know,” Edmund says. “That is true even if you are a Prince of New Fillory. There are royals on Earth who carry titles from other countries, I’m sure you can get away with it.” 

“And if you can’t, just don’t tell anyone,” Lucy says, and winks. 

Quentin slides the ring onto his right ring finger, finding that it fits perfectly. He’s never been much for rings before, but he already knows he’ll be keeping this one. A piece of this part of his life, to carry with him for now and always. 

He’s wearing it when he steps through the window a few days later. He and Kirel said their good-byes that morning; a long hug and even a quick kiss, just in farewell. Now Quentin is wearing a woven belt from Kirel’s home village as a good-bye gift. Maybe he should have refused it, but it doesn’t seem right to do that.

On the other side, there’s a carriage from Wavespire waiting. “They didn’t make you sit here for days, did they?” Quentin asks the driver. 

“No, Your Highness, we only arrived this morning.” 

“Good,” Quentin says, approaching the carriage just as the door opens. Eliot is alone inside, and he offers a hand to Quentin with a smile. 

“You coming? Stop fretting, we’re nice to the staff, I swear.” 

It feels, for a moment, so like the past that Quentin has to laugh, just a little. But he also can’t help remembering the last time Eliot offered a hand. Then, Quentin had snarled and ignored it, and he still doesn’t think he was wrong to be so angry at the time. But things are different now. 

And so, with the hand bearing a Narnian ring now and always, Quentin reaches out and takes Eliot’s hand, letting him help him into the carriage. But it’s not just that, he thinks as he settles in his seat across from Eliot, their feet brushing. It’s taking his hand into a fresh start.

It’s hope, which is something he’d almost forgotten how to feel. Really, that’s a good place to be in, only a few years after dying like he did, isn’t it? And he’s not doing that again anytime soon. 

There is too much in Life not to fight for it, even against nature. Even against himself. And he won’t be alone anymore, which is what he really wanted above all. He has friends in three different worlds. He can spend time in three different worlds. And he has another chance with the man he’d loved for a lifetime.

_ Your lessons are not yet learned, _ Aslan said at the edge of the world. In Quentin’s dream, he never said outright that Quentin had learned them, only that Narnia had been a place of healing for him, but… Quentin is beginning to think he has learned them. Or at least some of them, and is on his way to learning the others.

He knows this at least. He knows he was right, when he told himself it was worth it to try to escape the Meadows. And that is the thing he might have needed to learn most of all. 

“Quentin? You all right?” Eliot asks, eyeing him with concern. 

Quentin smiles. “You know something? I finally think I’m really going to be.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come chat with me at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or @Fae_Boleyn on Twitter! Or, for the RP inclined, cardtricksandminormendings.tumblr.com!

**Author's Note:**

> So, Narnia. I went with the movieverse because the characters are older, easier to write, and also because the Dark Island/Mist plot of the film had certain similarities to the Abyss story in Magicians s3. In the Earth of the Magicians verse, there are only four Narnia books, The Magician's Nephew, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, The Horse and His Boy, and Prince Caspian. Since I had to cut my #2 favorite book, The Silver Chair, this fic's title is from that book.
> 
> As for Aslan, is he Jesus as in canon? You decide. I think a powerful deity of life and death, of the in-between, isn't contradicting the analogy, but outright confirming he's Jesus doesn't really fit with Magicians, in my opinion. So it's left ambiguous.
> 
> Come chat with me on tumblr at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or on Twitter at @Fae_Boleyn!


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